Normal families in cold on public home

Kim Waters
“Normal” low-income earners are going homeless in Geelong as terror tenants fill available public housing, according to a community organisation.
Victorian Public Tenants Association’s Laurene Dietrich said the city’s low-income earners faced an “absolutely impossible” task finding public housing.
“To get public housing you need to be considered segment one, meaning you must be homeless, drug dependent, alcohol dependent or have a mental illness,” she said.
“We hear the advice from welfare groups is that people should leave their current accommodation and be homeless and then they’ll get put on the segment-one waiting list.
“If you’re an ordinary, run-of-the-mill person on a low income you can forget public housing altogether.”
Ms Dietrich said Geelong’s public housing was overflowing with segment-one tenants who “terrorise and abuse” other occupants.
“People with high needs are put into public housing and there aren’t enough services to support them,” she said.
“Normal public tenants are being stressed to the point where they just leave.”
A Geelong resident on the waiting list said everything about the city’s public housing was “scary”.
“Being homeless by yourself is one thing but I have two young kids to look after,” said the woman, who did not want to be identified.
“I was living at Grovedale Hotel for two weeks and at a caravan park for three weeks before the Salvation Army found me a house in Corio. I’m only meant to be here for three months and the Department of Housing says it could be up to a year before I get a house.”
The resident said the amount of segment one residents taking up public housing was a problem.
“I couldn’t live next door to someone who was drug or alcohol dependent,” she said.
“What if there were needles or broken glass around? I’ve got two kids and they would much rather put one drug or alcohol-dependent person in a home even though they are just going to wreck it.”
Coalition housing spokesperson Wendy Lovell slammed the Brumby Government last week for failing to fix Geelong’s “housing affordability crisis”.
She said the crisis was partly responsible for 2028 Geelong families on the public housing waiting list.
A spokesperson for Housing Minister Richard Wynne said the Government was aiming to cut the waiting list.
“Since 1999 we have cut the state-wide list by around 12 per cent. However, a series of pressures culminating over the past year have put considerable pressure on the system,” the spokesperson said.
“While our adding 144 new homes in the past year is a good start, the Brumby Government is committed to additional housing for those in need.”