When
Where
Why
We have a housing catastrophe on our hands.
There are 17,000 people on the public housing waiting-list, rents increased by 9% over the last year, and huge numbers of people are desperately competing for property. Over the last few decades, we have lost over 40,00 public homes. Many public homes have fallen into disrepair. For more and more low-income people, there is nothing left after they pay their rent. Our housing affordability crisis is leaving people in record financial stress, unable to pay for bills, food, or medicine, or worse, homeless. The response of governments? Pathetic.
The Federal Government has sat on its hands, refusing to touch the tax breaks and concessions that let investors and landlords build their portfolios, at the expense of people looking for a place to live. The State Government is willing to spend over $600 million on a new stadium, but refuses to expand our public housing stock. It keeps 2,000 empty public homes empty. It tries to fool us with so-called “affordable” housing developments, but we will not be tricked. These “affordable” houses might be good news for the organisations that get to build these new houses and collect the rent for the next 49 years, but few of these affordable homes will be affordable for low-income people, like job-seekers, pensioners, students, or insecure workers.
The Government defines “affordable” as 75% of market rent, which we all know will be unaffordable for those already struggling.
Across Adelaide, public housing is being knocked down and being replaced with community housing, and housing that will be out-of-reach for those who are not on full-time incomes. We are sick of it. In Eastwood, just around the corner from where we are rallying, 29 public homes will be replaced by 29 community homes, and 88+ so-called “affordable” homes. We need a massive increase in public housing stock (and for empty public housing to be put to use) – not fake solutions to our housing emergency!
Join us to fight for real solutions to our housing crisis!