Australian Greens: Labor’s Social Housing Plan will abandon hundreds of thousands of people to housing stress…

Greens spokesperson for housing Max Chandler-Mather has today responded to the Housing Minister’s comments on social housing, calling Labor’s plan to build 20,000 afforable homes over 5 years deeply unambitious and inadequate to address Australia’s social housing crisis.

Lines attributable to Max Chandler-Mather MP, Greens spokesperson for Housing and Homelessness

“While it’s good to see the Housing Minister talk about social housing today, Labor’s plan doesn’t even come close to touching the surface of Australia’s massive housing crisis, and in fact under their plan things will only get worse.”

“There are 163,500 households sitting on social housing waitlists across Australia and that number grows by 7600 homes a year, which means Labor’s 4000 social homes a year will literally see the waitlist grow every year.”

“We would never accept 163,500 kids sitting on waitlists to access public schools, so why should we accept that number of people waiting for a home?”

“Once you take into account people living in severe housing stress, then the actual need for social and affordable housing is over 600,000 homes.”

“The Federal Labor Government plans on spending $224 billion over 10 years on the Stage 3 tax cuts, but only $10 billion on building social and affordable housing, which is a real kick in the teeth for the hundreds of thousands of people in desperate need of a home.”

“The Greens plan would see at least 250,000 public and affordable homes built over 5 years, and 1 million over 20 years, which is exactly what we need to ensure everyone has a place to call home.”

“ We have the capacity, money and resources to build enough public housing for everyone who needs one, we just need to break the hold banks and property developers have over our political system.”