NSW Greens Housing spokesperson and Member for Newtown, Jenny Leong MP has called out the failure of the NSW Liberal budget to address systemic housing issues while talking up a $3.9 billion surplus.
“It is meaningless for the Premier to identify homelessness as one of her priorities if she is not willing to invest to actually address the housing crisis in our state, especially when the budget surplus this year is $3.9 billion.”
“This budget shows that the Liberal National government simply does not comprehend the urgent need for massive investment in public housing and the need for immediate measures to make housing affordable.
“The Liberal Treasurer said in his Budget Speech ‘we are a government that puts people first…’ but clearly that doesn’t apply to the nearly 40,000 people who are homeless or the over 100,000 people on the public housing waiting list or the 400,000 people who are living with rental stress..
“What we’ve seen today is basically business as usual, with the Liberals trying to big talk their spend as a $1 billion for homelessness, when in reality this announcement is only a $61 million in new money over four years.
“The current approach to homelessness in NSW has been a disaster with a 37% increase in homelessness under the Liberal’s watch.
“You can’t turn around the desperate need for maintenance and address the massive waiting list in public and social housing by only allocating $553 million to the Public Housing Capital Program for upgrades to existing dwellings and new public housing across the state.
“When it comes to renters, we know that it wouldn’t cost anything to offer long term security and affordability to renters in NSW – all that is needed is legislation to put an end to unfair no grounds evictions and a committing to limiting rent increases to one per year and in line with the CPI.
