Homeless support services and tenancy advocates have painted the emerging picture of homelessness in the Hunter, pitching tents and sharing people’s real and confronting stories on March 29.

The Hunter Humanitarian Crisis call to action event was held at Foreshore Park to raise awareness for the limited crisis accommodation and rental vacancies in the region.

The call to action was also a response to the recent cuts to government funding and unemployment benefits like JobKeeper, JobSeeker and the rent-rise moratorium.

Event organisers included Hunter Community Alliance, Hunter Homeless Connect, and Nova for Women and Children, who all helped create a temporary ‘tent city’ to demonstrate the crisis, with each tent enclosing a real-life story.

Photo: Hunter Community Alliance

CEO Nova for Women and Children, Kelly Hansen, said there was an ever-increasing demand for assistance and crisis shelters, especially after the impacts of COVID-19.

“Let’s be clear this crisis we find our communities in is a chosen course of action, a political choice by both our state and federal governments,” Hansen said.

“This perfect storm politically created has been exacerbated by an exhausted temporary accommodation budget, stretched during the COVID-19 lockdown.

“The government’s response has been to return to previous restrictions on access to temporary accommodation, which is based upon unrealistic obligations, and once they have utilised their 28 days of temporary accommodation, that is it—there is no more assistance.”

Hansen said families experiencing rental arrears due to COVID-19 were no longer supported with an end to the temporary tenancy moratorium on evictions on March 26.

“We are now seeing an increase of no grounds evictions, we have rentals skyrocketing, with 60 or more people turning up to inspections—let us not forget that rent in the private market has been beyond the scope of all low incomes,” she said.

“We have the added problem of an influx of people from the city squeezing out usual renters, offering more for properties and 6- 12 months’ rent in advance.

“Other rental properties have become Airbnb’s which are more lucrative with the attraction of domestic travel.”

Nicole Grgas from Hunter Tenants’ Advice and Advocacy Service said they had been the busiest they had ever been in 20 years.

“In the last two months, fifty per cent of our callers have been seeking advice about a notice of termination—that’s over 300 people in two months who have a notice of termination in our community,” Grgas said.

“The majority of those people are now struggling to find somewhere affordable and safe to rent.”

Nova for Women and Children had 88 women waiting for intake assessments and rapid response in February, with a four to five-person intake occurring daily.

Hansen said she was horrified by the political responsiveness to homelessness and was exhausted in “attempting to address the unaddressable”.

“Our state government could have chosen to invest in social housing and maintain and expand the temporary accommodation budget,” she said.

“Our federal government had the opportunity to simultaneously ignite the economy, create jobs and provide long term affordable housing after COVID-19.”

Federal Member for Newcastle Sharon Claydon said the loss of JobSeeker, JobKeeper and the end of the moratorium on evictions was a substantial triple hit for many in the community.

“It’s predicted that 150,000 people won’t have a job once JobKeeper is completely phased out, and there are more than 1,200 applications just for social housing in Newcastle—that’s just public housing,” Claydon said.

“We then have the private rental markets which showed last year that there were zero properties available in the Newcastle area for anybody on unemployment benefits.

“The level of unmet need is enormous, and this is what’s so unforgivable for the federal government; their COVID-19 Recovery Response did not include the building of new social housing stock.

“There is a massive backlog, and there has been zero leadership in willingness to inject funding and resources into that area.”

Matthew Talbot Homeless Service worker Ryan Pryor said the main reason for the influx in homelessness in Newcastle was the limited availability for affordable rentals.

“We are seeing more people with complex mental health needs, higher numbers of people experiencing family and domestic violence, higher rates of eviction and a higher number of child protection concerns,” Pryor said.

“As of this morning, we have 82 referrals, including families, waiting to be allocated a caseworker—our team of seven caseworkers are strained and at capacity.”

He said since February; they had received 119 referrals for people who were homeless or at risk of homelessness, including many families.

“Now is not the time to cut the funding to the sectors that work at the coalface in supporting vulnerable and disadvantaged communities,” he said.

“In the past few years, we have experienced catastrophic bushfires, an international pandemic and most recently devastating flooding, the outcome of which we are yet to face—we are asking our government to recognise and respond to this crisis as a matter of priority.”

Hayley McMahon