Cost of living relief welcomed though housing supply remains unaddressed

YWCA Canberra welcomes the release of the 2024-2025 ACT Government Budget and its investment towards cost-of-living relief to vulnerable Canberrans and support for font-line domestic and family violence services.

YWCA Canberra’s 2024-2025 Budget submission urged the Government to focus on housing affordability and supply, support for domestic and family violence services and cost-of-living relief. We have consistently drawn attention to the increasing demand for our food relief service in Tuggeranong and the overwhelming demand for our domestic violence support service.

In responding to the announcement of $913,000 towards emergency material, financial aid and food relief support, Ms Crimmins said:

“We see the enormity of cost-of-living pressures at our Lanyon food pantry, which provides food relief to low-income households. Earlier this month, we had 76 people visit the pantry on just one day and average usage has doubled in two years. We have consistently highlighted the abundant demand for this service and the desperation of people coming through the door. We look forward to finding out more information on how much of this welcomed investment will be allocated for food relief”.

Ms Crimmins also said; “The pre-Budget announcement of $12 million over 3 years towards frontline domestic and family violence services will mean our early intervention support service can employ an additional two specialist workers, and hopefully will no longer mean we are forced to place holds on referrals, as our staff have had to do in the past”. 

YWCA Canberra remains concerned that the abundant and longstanding issues with housing supply remain unaddressed. The announcement to grow the number of affordable rental properties is welcomed, however without addressing the core issue of land affordability for community and social housing providers we will not come close to tackling the overwhelming supply deficit for these alternative housing options for people on very low and fixed incomes. Further to this, the public housing target remains unchanged from 2020, despite there being nearly 3200 people languishing for years on the public housing wait list.

Ms. Crimmins said; “We have consistently called for a more affordable land release scheme that permitted community housing providers to access land parcels at discounted rates so as to make building desperately needed social and affordable housing financially viable”.