Full-time employees in the Western Plains are among a significant increase in those seeking housing assistance from Mission Australia the Western Plains App can reveal.

“Without doubt the issue that is top of the list and which are seeing an increase in calls for help in the Western Plains region is housing,” Jess Silva, Program Manager for Mission Australia for Western NSW told the Western Plains App.

“We are also seeing an increase in the number of people who are employed, full-time and part-time asking us for help,” she said.

Ms Silva said retail workers and laborers were the most common types of workers most likely to seek help from Mission Australia services within the last 12 months.

 She said a lack of housing for the region's poorest people was having a flow-on effect – making housing more expensive for the western plains' lowest paid workers.

“The last year has seen a particularly largely rise in homelessness and overcrowded living conditions across the Western Plains,” she said “We are seeing instances of up to 12 people sharing a three bedroom house.”

Silva said the Western Plains region had seen a particular rise in 'secondary homelessness' - when people are forced to move from one temporary shelter to another; including homeless shelters, couching surfing and staying at the home of a friend or relative. 

“Lack of social housing” behind spike

“The fact that it's not just the lowest socio-economic group struggling to find housing really does show we have a housing crisis. This has been made worse by increase costs of living, flooding, energy costs and interested rate rises” Silva said.

Rental vacancies are sitting at around the 1% mark across the region, while house prices have gone up exponentially.

“What we need is more Government-funded social housing,” Silva told the Western Plains App, explaining that the lack of social housing was forcing those on the lowest incomes into private rental markets, leading to fewer vacancies and higher rent for everyone living in or trying to find rental accommodation.

There are currently almost 60,000 households across NSW waiting for social housing with average wait times between 2 and 10 years for those on the waiting list according to the Community Housing Industry Association of NSW.

 Labourers have been among those now requesting housing help from Mission Australia. Image: Arron Choi from Unsplash.

A Committee for Sydney (CFS) report published earlier this month said social and affordable housing is just over 4 per cent of the housing market in NSW. 

It noted that this is below the OECD average for over 7%, and well below most European countries including Austria which has 24% social housing and the Netherlands which has 34%.

The NSW Council of Social Services has called on Governments to create 200,000 new community housing dwellings to be built to meet demand.

The NSW Government has said it is committed to ensuring “ the availability of affordable and diverse housing across regional NSW”. 

This year it announced it had adopted “all recommendations of the Regional Housing Taskforce” which released its report in November 2021, “as part of a comprehensive response to improve housing supply and affordability in the regions”.

This included a $33.8 million Regional Housing Development program, $174 million for 270 homes across the whole of regional NSW, and housing for new homes for First Nations people in Cobar and Coonamble.

Image: NSW Government

Cathryn Callaghan, Senior Policy Officer with Shelter NSW told the Western Plains App while she welcomed the Government's regional housing policy, including the funding for the unspecified number of new homes in Cobar and Coonamble, and other funding to upgrade existing social housing, there was no “solid commitment” from the Government on building public housing.

“A lot of headline features of the Government response are funds allocated towards improving the private housing supply pipeline and infrastructure-ready housing," she said.

"We’re not against this but observe that to date the private housing market, even when it is supplying appropriately-zoned land doesn’t naturally create housing that is suitable for the needs of low-income people."

“There are no demonstrated by target number and deadlines to build community housing in the regional plan,” Ms Callaghan told the Western Plains App.

In 2016 the NSW Government did pledge to build 23,000 new social housing dwellings throughout NSW but it looks unlikely to reach this target. By the end of 2021 it had completed just 2,393 dwellings.

Federally, the Albanese government has drafted a new Housing Accord, which includes building a million new homes in five years from 2024 and a $10 billion fund to build 30,000 new social and affordable housing properties.

Housing leading to increase in Mental Health presentations

Jess Silva from Mission Australia says the number of people, including full-time workers seeking help for mental health problems for housing stress has also increased over the last year.

“We are seeing more and more presentations at our community health services because people are under stress because of over-crowded housing or because they are worried they are simply not going to have somewhere to live,” she said.

“It’s a basic human need to have shelter and when someone doesn't have that it really decreases their sense of personal safety, so it is not surprising mental health problems like depression and anxiety arise.”