Canberran Monike Kemp and her son sleep on couches at her mum's home, having spent two years waiting for a public housing property.
The mum said she has asked multiple times for an appropriate property after Housing ACT offered her a two-bedroom apartment to share with her son and disabled sister in a residential complex beset with drugs and alcohol.
"Where do I put [my son]? If I put him on the couch, do I sleep on the floor? Even if my sister turned [the second] room into a bedroom for my son, still where do I sleep?" Ms Kemp said.
Hundreds of new homes will do little to reverse a long-term decline in the ACT's public housing numbers, a housing charity warns, saying the territory government "isn't turning things around".
The ACT budget, announced on June 10, included funding for 450 new public housing homes, the biggest investment in housing in the territory's history, with the government saying it was only the first stage of a broader program.
However, ACT Shelter chief executive Corinne Dobson said while the charity welcomed the announcement, the measures would not be enough to reverse the long-term decline of social housing.
She warned the increase in public housing properties wouldn't even meet the current level of demand in Canberra, let alone future need.
"This isn't turning things around," Ms Dobson said.
"We need to be honest about the scale of the challenge. Even if the government's stated budget commitments are met in full, social housing will continue to decline as a proportion of overall housing in the ACT, and too many Canberrans will remain locked out of safe, stable and affordable housing.
"This budget does not reverse that decades-long trajectory, nor does it chart a credible path toward the government's own social housing targets for 2030. We need a sustained, multi-year commitment to significantly and permanently grow our social housing safety net."
Figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare show that in 2010 the ACT had 10,858 public housing properties with a population of 358,600, or about one property per 33 people. By 2024, the territory had 10,952 properties and 486,231 people, or about one property per 44 people.
In March 2026, the average wait time for ACT public housing was about 1859 days for standard housing, 1173 days for high need and 172 days for priority.
Ms Kemp, who lives with health complications due to a rib injury and failed surgery, said she had been asking Housing ACT to transfer her family into a three-bedroom house with space for them to live with their pets.
"All we've asked [Housing ACT] for, for at least the last 12 months straight, is just transfer [us] into a three-bedroom house. That's it," she said. "Every single part of the process that [Housing ACT] asked for has been ticked and ticked again."
On Thursday, Treasurer Chris Steel said the announcement of new homes was the first stage of a massive investment in new public housing, backed up with support for the community housing sector to build more than 1000 community affordable homes.
"It's one of the reasons why we've had to look very closely at the infrastructure pipeline to make sure that we could fit in the additional housing investment that we wanted to make in this budget into our infrastructure program," he said.
"It's off the back of the growing and renewing housing program which is still under way and has renewed 1000 homes and built 400 more that are in the final stages of construction."
The territory budget also included $183.4 million in extra funding over four years for public housing repairs and maintenance along with $15.8 million to progressively insource housing repair and maintenance services.
The ACT Ombudsman published a blistering report into the way Housing ACT and its contractor, Programmed, manage and maintain the territory's public housing properties in March 2026.
