Today Home in Place is launching a national advocacy campaign to galvanise public support for a national housing strategy and a significant increase in funding for social and affordable housing.
Our campaign will shine a penetrating light on the way in which decades of underinvestment have resulted in a housing stress and homelessness becoming a reality for sections of society for whom such things would once have been unthinkable.
Unfortunately, most people still think being homeless means living rough on the street, but the reality is the hidden homelessness epidemic is far more widespread. Our campaign will draw attention to the fact that modern homelessness is couch surfing and hot bedding. It is people sleeping in their cars, living in garages, campsites and caravan parks. It’s upstanding everyday people and citizens, from all parts of society. People who are doing everything they possibly can to keep a roof over their head but finding the housing crisis makes it impossible.
Access to safe and adequate housing is a basic human right, and providing that right is a fundamental responsibility of government.
Currently, the federal government spends just 0.6% of its budget on housing. That simply isn’t enough. Once upon a time, government delivered around 20% of all new homes. These days that figure has fallen to around 2%. Here at Home in Place we deal with the human consequences of that every day.
The End Modern Homelessness campaign calls on the government to adopt a national housing strategy and commit a minimum of 2% of the federal budget to funding it.
I encourage you to show your support by visiting the campaign website and using the embedded form to contact your MP as well as sharing the campaign materials on social media.
