The head of Homelessness NSW has called for direct government investment in social housing in the Hunter to catch up with spiralling demand.
"If you cannot afford to rent, sooner or later you are going to be homeless," the peak agency's chief executive, Trina Jones, told the Newcastle Herald during a homelessness summit in Maitland on Tuesday.
"The market has not and will not deliver the type of housing needed for those on low incomes, and there must be government investment."
A new NSW Parliamentary Research Office report shows the number of social housing dwellings in the state grew 9 per cent from 2013 to 2022, but the Hunter still faces a large housing shortfall.
The office's report says 17,300 households in the Hunter had an unmet housing need in 2021, a figure forecast to rise to 21,700 by 2041.
It defined unmet housing need as people who were homeless or living in overcrowded homes, and low-income households paying more than 30 per cent of their income in rent in the private market.
Ms Jones said governments were acting too slowly to keep up with demand for social and affordable housing.
"In the last decade in this region, in Maitland, for example, there's been a loss of over 300 social housing properties," she said.
"We haven't had the investment in the supply of social and affordable housing to meet the needs of people on low incomes.
"Every year in NSW there's 35,000 residential dwellings built. Seven hundred of those are social housing properties, which represents about 2 per cent."
Shelter NSW published a report in February which showed Lake Macquarie, Port Stephens, Cessnock, Maitland and Newcastle were among the state's 10 local government areas with the highest housing need.
"There's 57,000 on the NSW housing waiting list. We hear reports of 10-year waiting times," Ms Jones said.
"At the current rate of investment in social housing it will actually take over 80 years to have enough housing to meet the demand."
A Productivity Commission report last year on the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement urged governments to avoid public housing targets and focus instead on "tenure-neutral rental assistance that is portable across social and private rental housing".
NSW Premier Chris Minns said on Monday that he had ordered his ministers to identify surplus land which could be rezoned for housing.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported on Monday that the former Coalition government sold off 4858 residential properties from 2011 to 2023 and built only 4500 with the proceeds, though some of the sales were to community housing providers.
Housing Minister Rose Jackson has ordered a pause on selling off more social housing, saying "privatisation clearly hasn't worked, and we are taking decisive, bold action to build a social housing system we can be proud of".
For Ms Jones, that bold action cannot come soon enough.
"We are calling on our governments for courage and ambition," she said.
"We know what works to make homelessness rare, brief and non-recurring. It's investment in housing and investment in support services."
Hunter New England has the third most public housing dwellings, 19,453, of the 15 Department of Communities and Justice districts in the state.
The number of people on the NSW social housing waiting list grew 15 per cent to 57,000 in the year to June 2022.
The waiting list in Hunter New England was 5901 in June 2021, behind only South Western Sydney (9945) and ahead of Western Sydney (4746).
"We know that there are solutions to end homeless in Maitland and Newcastle and the surrounding areas, but we urgently need investment in social housing and investment in support services to make sure everyone has a safe place to call home and the support to keep it," Ms Jones said.
Homelessness NSW wants the state government to invest 1 per cent of its budget to kick-start public housing investment with support from the federal government.
"What can they do now? Put some land and some capital on the table and support community housing providers to develop affordable and social housing in the area, but also make investments themselves in public housing," she said.
Tuesday's summit was organised by Hume Community Housing and attended by more than 120 representatives from Hunter service providers.
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