Wednesday, 30 July 2025

Housing

Will FOWLES (Ringwood) (19:10): (1226) My adjournment this evening is directed to the Premier. The action I seek is for the Premier to fix the government’s short-term housing programs to ensure no Victorian is faced with homelessness at the hands of a failed and failing housing system. Victoria’s housing support system has collapsed under the twin problems of unprecedented demand and an appalling lack of funding. Every part of the system is stretched, and the lack of follow-on housing options means people are remaining in short-term or inappropriate accommodation far longer than intended. In many cases they are being left with no housing at all. Crisis accommodation is at capacity. Vulnerable people in urgent need are being turned away. Transitional housing is swamped and artificially constrained by the government’s nonsensical time-limited leases.

I recently heard from a constituent in transitional housing whose 12-month lease is ending. Despite doing everything right, they have received a notice to vacate with no offer of long-term housing. They are now at risk of homelessness with nowhere else to go. Frontline workers have made it clear to me that this is not an isolated incident. The wait for social housing continues to grow. As of March 2025 there were over 65,000 applications on the Victorian housing register. Meanwhile, a lack of affordable rentals in the private market places further pressure on the system. Exit pathways are limited, trapping people in temporary solutions that were simply never designed for long-term living, and the result is a bottleneck. Even those engaging with services and maintaining tenancies are still being left stranded. Victoria continues to experience some of the highest demand for homelessness services in the country. At the last census some 30,000-odd Victorians were without a home, almost a third of the national total. My office is contacted weekly by people caught in this system – people who want stability but are denied the housing options they need. This is no longer a matter of people falling through the cracks. The cracks are chasms.

The housing system is fundamentally and fatally under-resourced and misaligned with the needs of Victorians, and I call on the Premier to fix her short-term housing programs and ensure that there are clear, supported pathways that get you from crisis to stability and into permanent housing. It is the government’s responsibility today and every day to ensure that every Victorian has access to a safe and secure home.