Over 140,000 people are currently waiting for public housing in Australia, which doesn’t include many of the people sleeping rough.
Every single day the offices of Greens representatives around the country receive calls from the community, desperately in need of access to public housing or urgent repairs to ensure their homes are livable. We hear stories of families of twelve or thirteen people, crammed together in 2 or 3 bedroom apartments. We work with residents waiting weeks for repairs to essential services like broken toilets.
Housing is a human right, but for too long governments around this country haven’t treated it as such. We urgently need more and better public housing.
On Saturday 4 July, public housing towers in Melbourne were placed under an immediate ‘hard’ lockdown, preventing residents from leaving their homes for at least five days.
Public housing residents around the country are faced with a higher risk of being exposed to COVID-19 because of decades of neglect from state and federal governments, that have left homes and buildings with broken amenities and without regular cleaning.
Right now, because of the lockdown in Melbourne, the media and the community are more engaged with public housing than they ever have been. We have a crucial opportunity to force the government to commit to fixing public housing.
It’s unacceptable that people do not have adequate housing in a wealthy country in this day and age.
Can you sign our petition calling on governments to urgently fix and fund public housing?