Home dream dashed

GARY KLEYN

22nd June 2006

THE number of people living on the streets in the South West could fill a primary school as the region plunges deeper into a housing crisis. This was an alaming finding in a re port completed this week by the Greater Bunbury Housing Forum, which provides an indictable snapshot into what is occurring within the social fabric of the South West. Escalating house prices in the region are not only affecting the unemployed or disabled, but increasingly it is famil ies who are struggling with the burden of paying rent and the mortgage on their unfinished new home.

The forum, which was formed late last year pulling together South West industry and government agencies, followed several reports in the South Western Times that highlighted the suffering of local families.

Real Estate Institute of WA South West representative and forum participant John Saunders said the situation was urgent as more and more people were living in some kind of crisis who were not the traditional poor or vulnerable.

Agencies for South West Accommodation chief executive Ann Mills said some people were waiting up to four years to get into low-cost housing. In 2005, Centrelink had about 700 people needing housing while ASWA was forced to turn away 107 young people and the Bunbury Housing As sociation had 250 people waiting for accommodation including 193 families.

Meanwhile, the South West Aboriginal Medical Service reported that many indigenous people were living in overcrowded houses.

The forum report suggested one solution to overcome the problem was to improve public and private sector partnerships in housing developments.

``I can't see it (the solution) being driven by the private sector. It's got to be through private enterprise but the Government needs to put incentives in place (to encourage investment in affordable housing),'' Mr Saunders said. One example was to ask private developers to set aside a percentage of their project for affordable housing in return for allowing them to build to a higher density.

Bunbury City Council has already considered what it could do to alleviate the pressure. City manager of community and culture Dom Marzano said he hoped that by highlighting the problems, there would be a new willingness to find a solution.

``The City of Bunbury is looking at its own policies and planning processes and seeing how we can make positive change to ease the problem,'' Mr Marzano said. ``We are looking at how it can be in corporated into the city's blueprint for the future, the Bunbury City Vision project.''

Until that happened, Ms Mills believed another short-term fix was available. ``Another thing we're looking at is trying to increase more efficient use of existing housing and encouraging people to take boarders or lodgers into their homes,'' she said.