As regular readers may have noticed, we say this every month, but August has been another busy month for Shelter NSW team!

From community organising in Newcastle to local housing campaigns and strategy on the Mid North Coast, and from policy reform to research, we continue to analyse, agitate, and advocate to improve the structures that shape people’s experience of housing, from energy efficiency to social security payments, affordable housing schemes, and private rental market regulation.

Across the state, we continue to see the same fundamental challenge: too many people are struggling to find a home that is affordable, secure, appropriate and healthy. The particular pressures vary between communities.

In regional areas, such as the Coffs Coast, for example, a shortage of long-term rental housing can be as significant as high rents, while in metropolitan areas such as Sydney, Newcastle, and Wollongong, the loss of low-cost housing and the growing gap between incomes and housing costs continue to place pressure on households doing it tough and beyond, to moderate income earners. At Shelter NSW, we always strive to listen to these different experiences, connect them to the broader housing system, and advocate for solutions that work for people living on lower incomes.

This month’s newsletter reflects that approach. Our team travelled to Bellingen and Coffs Harbour to meet with community organisations, councils, community housing and homelessness services, and explore locally driven responses to housing challenges. In the Inner West, we have continued to engage with Council on its affordable housing policy, while our work with the Hunter Community Alliance demonstrates the importance of building broad community alliances capable of turning housing concerns into collective action.

We also continue to contribute to the evidence base for housing justice. This month we are promoting ongoing ACOSS & UNSW research into poverty and inequality and a University of Sydney study examining the relationship between changing weather, housing conditions and mental health and wellbeing. We remain particularly interested in evidence that can strengthen the case for healthier, more energy-efficient and accessible homes, particularly as we advocate for NSW to implement the National Construction Code 2022 accessibility reforms without further delay and impatiently await the results of the consultation into potential minimum energy efficiency standards for rental properties.

Those projects are not patchwork. Taken together, these stories reflect what Shelter NSW has been working towards for more than 50 years: better homes, stronger communities and a housing system that works for everyone, not only those best placed to navigate and ‘play’ the market.

And next month, we’ll be releasing our most comprehensive attempt in the last few years at bringing this vision together in a single document: Shelter NSW 2027 Election Platform.

 Stay tuned and keep fighting the good fight for housing justice!