TBB Reacts – $511m to social housing & homelessness
01 May 2023
The 2023/2024 State Budget is set to provide $511million in new social housing and homeless investment in WA.
TBB Director Lex Barnett, shares some thoughts on the state budget announcement, including one notable disappointment.
The McGowan Government has just announced $511 million towards new social housing and homelessness investment initiatives. Any new money invested in this sector is unquestionably welcomed, with priority housing waitlist times on the wrong side of 12 months, and the visible increase in rough sleepers, including the ‘working poor’. The underlying problems here are extremely complex, and the solutions must be well-considered and multi-layered.
While it appears that most of the funds are to go to the Social Housing Investment Fund, this seems, at first glance to be a somewhat one-dimensional approach. Let us not forget that there is a plethora of hard working not-for-profit and volunteer organizations in the community that could also be leveraged through government assistance to do so much more than they are doing at present, and we hope that Minister Carey considers carefully how the funds are spent to best effect ‘on the ground’.
One notable disappointment is, once again, the proportion of funding dedicated supporting rough sleepers in so many townships in regional WA (only $49 million). We are all aware of the extremely high construction costs in the regions and, with the high number of communities experiencing such issues, $49 mill is not going to stretch very far.
Lets not forget there is a plethora of hard working not-for-profit and volunteer organizations in the community that could also be leveraged through government assistance to do so much more than they are doing at present, and we hope that Minister Carey considers carefully how the funds are spent to best effect ‘on the ground.