Cost of living increases leave some Dubbo residents homeless

AS THE price of rentals remains high and the market continues to remain tight across the country, many Dubbo residents are reaching out for housing support.

Orana Support Service is a specialist homeless service provider that operates both men’s and women’s refuges.

An Acting Tenants and Support Manager said the service does a lot of liaising with community housing and public housing organisations for clients, and assists clients in resolving their housing needs.

“We do an initial intake, we get more about their background and assist clients in going through applications for private applications for housing or affordable housing, and advocate on their behalf,” they said.

“If their tenancy histories are with public housing, we’ll do a lot of the leg work. If there’s barriers to being approved, we’ll work with the client to overcome them.

“With the public housing and community housing, most of the community housing providers will use Housing Pathways which is a system set up through the Department of Communities and Justice.

“Housing Pathways is basically the waiting list. Community housing providers and public housing providers all utilise that to allocate properties.”

The wait list is currently “quite extensive”, with Dubbo deemed to be a “high demand location”, particularly within the last few months.

“I think (homelessness) has always been there. It’s just more noticeable now,” the Acting Tenants and Support Manager said.

“There are certainly more people looking for rentals and affordable properties and there’s certainly a lack of affordable properties out there.

“There are different kinds of homelessness as well – people couch surfing, people with no tenures because they’re in boarding houses, and people staying in long stays at motels or at caravan parks because they can’t secure permanent accommodation.

“It’s our society in general. People (are being) greedy and putting rents up. The cost-of-living increases impact everything. Everything has increased (except for) people’s incomes.

“Investors bought up properties, pushing the price of properties up. It’s just created more demand in turn – and the lack of available properties and the sheer number of people needing them is pushing up the price.”