The NSW Budget was delivered on the shortest day of the year, and cast a long shadow on the overlooked needs of those in insecure housing – renters.
Shelter NSW has mixed views about the 2022-2023 NSW State Budget: not so much a case of ‘winners and losers’, but winners and those who didn’t even get a ticket. There are increasing numbers of low-income renters, in both the private sector and on the waiting list for social housing, with no new or innovative funding announced.
In the final days before the NSW Budget announcement Shelter NSW, along with CHIA NSW, Committee for Sydney and Homelessness NSW, signed an open letter to Premier Dominic Perrottet and Treasurer Matt Kean calling on them to address the housing vulnerability crisis.
You can read the open letter which was extensively reported in this article in The Guardian. We again linked arms with our fellow peak peers to express our disappointment in the budget announcements for particular vulnerable groups, especially regarding housing security, in this media release.
With this disappointing budget behind us and March 2023 state election ahead we will recommit to the asks we set out in our earlier Pre-Budget Submission to NSW Treasury and refine some important priorities we are seeing across the broader planning, tenancy, housing and homeless system.
As a reminder our key prebudget asks were and remain, for:
- a dramatic increase in social and affordable housing;
- a large social housing repairs and maintenance program for existing social housing stock (including improving the thermal performance);
- increase funding to Specialist Homelessness Services (SHS) by 20% to enable it to move beyond a crisis response and deal with the steadily increasing demand on its services;
- increased assistance to lower income households (including in social housing) in dealing with rising energy costs;
- creation of a standing hardship fund and expand rental assistance support to tenants in the private rental markets – to prevent evictions into homelessness and other insecure housing.