By Mikayla van Loon
The State budget released last week has aimed to build on its existing promises for building more social housing and improving conditions for women.
Having already contributed $5.3 billion towards the Big Housing Build in Victoria’s growth corridors, the State government has committed to ramping up the project to build 12,000 new social and affordable homes but the primary focus was on the creation of jobs.
“Our unprecedented investment in safe, secure housing will change lives – providing a home for even more Victorians and creating thousands of jobs as we recover from the pandemic,” housing minister Richard Wynne said.
While Anglicare Victoria’s Eastern Region regional director Shaye Chalmers said the commitment was a welcomed one, more needed to be done.
“At Anglicare Victoria, we welcome the Victorian government’s commitment to build more social housing but the planned number still won’t be enough to meet demand,” she said.
“There really needs to be an increase in the rate of JobSeeker and Youth Allowance payments to prevent homelessness. While rents, petrol, utilities and groceries continue to rise, our client’s income support payments are being stretched ever more thinly.
“Increasing the level of the support payments would improve affordable access to the rental market for those on low incomes.”
Anglicare Victoria CEO Paul McDonald said as the cost of living rises, as well as rent, people are having to make choices between food and a roof over their heads, a situation that becomes even more challenging when a woman has had to leave a violent situation.
“Our agency is seeing dozens of single mums who have had to flee domestic violence situations – often with just the bare essentials – and are finding it hard to get rentals they can afford,” he said.
“This year there were just seven properties out of almost 19,000 which were affordable for single parents on income support.”
EDVOS general manager for services and impact Janene Evans said there is a critical need for more affordable housing so women and children can live safely.
“Any housing is all a good thing for the State, affordable housing is at crisis levels and any investment is welcome. We need more affordable rental properties for women and children to exit crisis accommodation into,” she said.
The government has stood by its promise to implement all of the 227 recommendations from the Royal Commission into Family Violence, with a total of $240 million announced in the budget.
This includes expanding critical refuge and crisis accommodation for victim survivors, support for family violence services to provide crisis assistance and specialised therapeutic support for young people, programs to work with perpetrators and prevention and education through Respect Victoria.
Pleased with the government’s commitment to implementing the recommendations, Ms Evans did say “the trick will be sustaining and maintaining a coordinated response,” as well as undertaking prevention action and education to change the systemic attitudes and behaviours.
“To date, response has received most of the funding but it is vitally important that we work at all levels,” she said.
“Without social change we will not see a community free from violence. We do need to see prevention happening at all levels though, it would be good to see more investment in prevention at a local/community level…EDVOS does some amazing work in this space that is still unfunded.”
Ms Evans said every Department of Families, Fairness and Housing region has had new refuge facilities built, including two more in this budget, as well as additional Orange Doors in the eastern region coming later this year, something she called “a vast improvement.”
“Women and families need safe places to go when remaining in their home is not an option, however, we also need to keep working on making the perpetrators of violence accountable so that women and children are not uprooted and made homeless as a result.”
Improving outcomes for women on a whole was funded quite heavily with $940 million in initiatives primarily focused on giving women more employment opportunities and closing the gender pay gap.
Minister for Women Gabrielle Williams said the pandemic revealed the disproportionate impact on women when it comes to financial insecurity and safety.
“We know that inequality for women drives violence against women – that’s why our law reform and investments target both,” she said.
“From crisis accommodation to consent education, we’ll keep investing in the services we need to keep women and children safe and the Victorians we need to deliver them.”
On a whole, Ms Evans said the budget for family violence reflects continuing support from the government to create more awareness but with that comes higher demand for an already underfunded and strained workforce.
“A further investment in case management has been announced and EDVOS looks forward to hearing how this will support the work we do in the Eastern Region of Melbourne, in saying that we also have a major workforce issue.
“It is one thing to have investment in the family violence system, however, we need to recognise that this work is done by skilled practitioners who are simply not out there.
“EDVOS and agencies like ours are working hard to recruit and train a whole new workforce, this inevitably places a strain on our organisation that is generally not funded.”
