Thread by @KirstiMiller30

We have over 3million 🇦🇺’s living below the poverty line.

There was a period in 🇦🇺 when the ‘right’ to housing went unquestioned. In post WW2 Australia, State Housing authorities, with support from the Federal government, invested in social housing throughout our country.

At that point in time, we seemed to understand as a nation that all people and all families, even those in low paid work or unable to work (due to illness or unemployment) deserved the dignity of housing.

That particular 🇦🇺, lost for the past few decades, can be & must be recovered.

Homelessness is a direct result of poverty & unaffordable housing options. It is not a result of illness, addictions, poor choices or a lack of living skills. Those things can lead to poverty.

Understanding that poverty does not have to result in homelessness is the first step to understanding that Australia can manage homelessness much better than it has, in fact, bring to an end the indignity and shame of long term homelessness.

There is a significant community and government cost to not ending people’s experience of long term homelessness. Research conducted in 🇦🇺 and elsewhere has shown that people who sleep rough are high users of government funded and other services.

Parsell (2015)found that in the 12 months prior to moving into permanent supportive housing that a group of long term homeless people in Queensland each used about $48,000 in government services.

These included police interactions, custody, ambulance and hospital costs. In the 12 months after living in permanent supportive housing (Brisbane Common Ground) that same group cost the government approximately $35,000.

This cost included the price of providing the permanent supportive housing. There was a cost off-set of $13,000 to our community by ensuring that people were housed and supported.

It actually costs more money to keep people homeless. More importantly, it costs people experiencing it their dignity and health.

The Australian govt in recent decades has moved away from a civil society that provided basic protections to people who are unemployed, unwell or experiencing poverty for other reasons.

Increasingly we have seen charities grow in number and size in order to pick up after government failure. Whilst helping our fellow citizens with the basics of life,

such as temporary shelter, food and clothing is a genuine & kind response – it has now reached a point where it is clear that our governments rely on charitable efforts to fill the large and growing gaps in our social safety net.

Charities are not in a position to end long term homelessness or the casualisation of employment.

This is rightly the work of governments and their policies. Adequate access to jobs and housing as well as income support or rehabilitation (if required by some individuals) is the mark of a civil society. Handing out free leftover food in a park is not.

When volunteer and charitable efforts must necessarily be focused on helping people to simply survive, they are not able to be focused on the additional benefits they can actually bring to our community.

Connecting up with social activity, caring for our environment, facilitating friendship networks, helping out in genuine times of crisis, these should be some of the core roles of charitable and philanthropic endeavours.

A national response that aims to keep people housed or return people back to housing as rapidly as possible is a must for 🇦🇺.

Public housing also the key element to stop ex-prisoners re-offending

Public housing gives ex-prisoners better prospects
A new report has found there's a simple way to give ex-prisoners a better chance to stay out of jail: public housing.

Researchers from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) compared two groups of ex-prisoners in New South Wales.

One was a group of 623 prisoners who received public housing after leaving prison, and the other contained 612 prisoners who received rental assistance only – in other words, they were given a subsidy but had to find their own place to live.

We've got a particular problem with people coming out of prison into homelessness or into unstable housing. Research has found that provision of public housing to people coming out of prison made a big difference across a range of criminal justice measures.

For the group given public housing, police incidents dropped 8.9 per cent per year.

Court appearances, proven offences, and time in custody were all down.

And all of these reductions meant costs to the justice system dropped. Justice costs per person fell nearly $5,000 per year initially, then a further $2,040 per year.

The other comparative group was ex-prisoners given housing assistance only. They had a subsidy but had to find their own place to live.

The average number of police incidents for ex-prisoners in that group kept climbing. Some indicators did gradually decline, such as average predicted days in custody. But the reductions weren't nearly as significant as the public housing group.

And criminal justice costs for the rental assistance group also continued to rise.

In short, public housing is a useful tool to help keep ex-prisoners from returning to crime.