NSW Government Announces Homeless Plan

Monday, 03 August 2009 00:00

 From the AAPT Newswire service - August 2, 2009, 1:15 pm 

NSW Government announces $284m to tackle homelessness in NSWover the next four years.

The global financial crisis is said to have caused a big increase in the number of people already homeless in the state.

Latest data available shows there were 27,000 people without a roof over their head in NSW in 2006.

However that number has risen substantially in the last year according to the office of NSW housing minister David Borger.

On Sunday the minister said the new commonwealth and state funding is aimed at achieving new targets of reducing the number of people sleeping rough by 70 per cent, the general homeless population by 25 per cent and reducing homelessness among indigenous populations.

"We haven't set targets for a long time but targets are good because it means the community can hold us to account," Mr Borger told a press conference in Sydney on Sunday.

Federal housing minister Tanya Plibersek told the same press conference the money would provide 175 extra properties for the homeless in Sydney, Albury, Wagga Wagga and New England.

It will also help establish additional outreach services in Sydney and Newcastle and offer more help to women and children escaping domestic violence.

Ms Plibersek said there would also be extra investment for repairing and upgrading public housing.

"We are talking about the way we will spend a massive new investment of $284 million over the next four years on homelessness support services and on specialist types of accommodation for people across the spectrum of homelessness," Ms Plibersek said.

Mr Borger said services for homeless people must become more sophisticated.

"We can't just do things the way we've done them in the past. We need to make inroads now at reducing the various populations of homeless people," he said.