Anglicare Sydney Media Release
The Australian Government is enabling more social and affordable housing than it has in a generation, but new Anglicare Sydney research warns that supply alone will not solve the housing crisis.
Anglicare Sydney’s latest housing report, More Than a Key in the Door, draws on 421 resident surveys, 22 interviews and seven years of assessment data across 803 social and affordable homes in NSW.
The report shows the strongest results occur when affordable housing is combined with secure tenure, practical support and a sense of community. When these principles are applied resident outcomes are impressive:
- Loneliness fell from 38% to 21 per cent
- 95 per cent felt a sense of belonging
- More than 90 per cent of residents were confident of keeping their home long term
- 92 per cent knew where to seek help, up from 52 per cent
Personal Wellbeing Index results show residents also report markedly higher results against sector benchmarks (for those aged over 65), with wellbeing scoring of 76.1 (benchmark of 66.8) and community connectedness at 77.0 (benchmark of 65.0).
Anglicare Sydney Housing Lead Dr Rob Stokes said governments deserved credit for supporting a significant expansion of housing supply but warned against treating housing as shelter alone.
“If we focus only on supply and ignore community, connection and support, we risk moving the crisis rather than solving it,” Dr Stokes said.
“These outcomes tell us that the biggest gains in wellbeing came from things a building cannot provide on its own. Simply getting a key to a home isn’t enough.”
What Anglicare Sydney is calling for
The report makes three recommendations to governments:
- Bundle support funding with capital funding for new social and affordable housing developments.
- Preserve affordability requirements over the long term, rather than for a fixed window.
- Measure tenancy sustainment and resident wellbeing alongside housing supply.
“Get these three things right and we protect the long-lasting benefits social and affordable housing can deliver,” Dr Stokes said.
“Every social and affordable housing tenant deserves to have housing combined with stability, relationships and support.”
Jo’s story
For Jo Nicholson, who lives in one of Anglicare’s social and affordable homes at St Luke’s Village in Dapto, the difference between housing and home is deeply personal.
Before moving into Anglicare Housing, she was at risk of homelessness.
“Rent was out of my reach and I had no idea where I was going to live. I was lucky enough that Anglicare has helped me find a place that has turned out to be so much more than just a key in a door,” Ms Nicholson said.
Today she is an active participant in village life and contributes items to community events and fetes.
“I’ve spent a lot of my life on the receiving end of help. Here I get to be the one who turns up with something for the stall, and that’s changed how I feel about myself.”
Some 84 per cent of Anglicare Housing residents are older women, with 63 per cent aged 65 or over. Almost one-third had experienced homelessness in the past.
The More Than a Key in the Door report is available at: www.anglicare.org.au/housingimpact
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Am I missing something here?
According to the Bureau of Statistics figures (or at least their graph) of total completed dwellings under Labor there aren’t even as many dwellings being built as there were under the Coalition pre-Covid.
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/industry/building-and-construction/building-activity-australia/latest-release
From the graph, Total Dwellings Completed, it can be seen that for the period ’18 to ’19 a reasonable median quarterly completion rate would be 50 000 dwellings/qtr. The current rate under Labor has been under 45 000/qtr. for over a year.
With all its HAFF, Build to Rent, Help to Build and now 5% deposit load of shit, that this stinking, rotting carcass of a party Labor has brought in, it is actually performing worse than before.
This lying filth Labor government branded The Greens as ‘blockers’ for trying to improve the HAFF and wouldn’t even negotiate on, guess what – Capital Gains Tax discount and Negative Gearing, fancy that – and now Australia isn’t even building as many dwelling as it was under the Coalition.
If you intend voting Labor ahead of The Greens, Socialist Alliance, or an Independent that wants to build public housing, when you look at your children, do you think to yourself: ‘Tuff titties, I’d rather put Labor back in power than see you live in anything better than a car’?
@ Thommo: Geez Thommo, you just have to stop being so pragmatic! With the Alb-Appeasie LABOR misgovernment intent on playing the loyal vassal, paying $2,000,000,000 tribute, and militarising Australia by building the USUKA infrastructure for the defence of the US billionaire’s club playing politics with the demented, geriatric, bone-spurs PPOTUS (Pederast Protector of the Undemocratic Sewer).
How many Australian military bases have been taken over by US Occupation troops, the list is much longer than just Darwin, Tindal, NW Cape, Pine Gap??
Why should Australia be YET AGAIN sucked into another US imperialist war to protect the declining economic power of America due to under financing of research & development?
How does it benefit Australian voters to pay for an American campaign to destroy Australia’s primary export market?
Alb-Appeasie & Retched Mediocrity need to get out from under the Canberra Bubble and away from the harpie US military influencers and develop Australia as a non-aligned middle power rather than a vassal sucker prepared to ”donate” government mercenary troops to the US imperialist cause.
Thommo:
There are other factors affecting construction rates. Minor matters like supply chain disruptions due to the pandemic, for instance.
Leefe
Speaking with a local electrician the other day, he mentioned that quite a number of tradies (plumbers and sparkies in particular) had left our regional area during Covid when there was no work around and housing construction was at a standstill and they moved their businesses and families to larger communities where work was more easily available : they won’t be coming back in a hurry.
Have commenters here and elsewhere considered widely on housing problems? Over time, having three levels of government, with confusion and ignorance affecting speed and quality of decision making, added to imperious mediaeval inertness in such as the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Australia, Master Builders, all supply groups, finance bodies, Reserve Bank, it is a big congealing shitpot. No law, department, policy, bright idea, Hansonist brainplop, Taylorish blurt, ALP freezystally inertness or ignorance from Murdoch maggots counts. Not one achievable line of foresight exists for decent, affordable housing for underearning serfy workers today. What can be done? Migrants built the Snowy while getting Hanson type consolation at a fiver per squirt. Could there be sense in “replication”? Meanwhile, housing suppliers are failing, though clear need remains. Astounding…
Spot om, Terry, Phil. It’s far more complex than “ALP Bad”.
leefe,
Me (Oct ’26): filthy lying Labor
You （Oct‘26）: supply chains due to pandemic (which was in ’20)
Clare O’Neill (election campaign May ’25): we will spend $10 billion, and build 12 million homes by ’30.
Labor (for the past 4 years): ‘our big build’, 12 million homes built by ’30 is the centrepiece of our program
The same supply chain problems would have existed in May ’25, if what you say is correct (you haven’t shown any evidence that supply chains have been the problem over the past year and half). Those supply chain problems would have been in existance for over 4 years when Clare O’Neill and the rest of Labor claimed they were going to build 12 million homes to address the homelessness problem.
The $10 billion wasn’t even to be spent on housing, it was to be borrowed, then invested and the interest earned spent on housing; was Clare trying to con the people? even Michael Sukkar could saw through that one.
Can you see the problem with what you said, and what Labor has been saying for over 4 years? or do I have to spell it out for you?
Thommo:
You missed “for instance”. There are other factors. Did you read what Terry said about tradies? Or Phil’s comments about the comnplexities of regulations and zoning? Have you considered economic problems such as inflation (and rising interest rates) and wage constraint? International events affect the situation also; the federal government is not the only factor affecting this.
I agree that they haven’t done enough. I can also see it isn’t as simple as snapping your fingers and making it happen right away.
I am so bloody sick of the constant black-and-white vision of so many people. Life just doesn’t work like that.
leefe,
it’s immaterial whether I’ve looked at those factors, I haven’t been the government for the past 4 and a half years, Labor has. It’s a question of whether Labor looked at those factors when it was boasting to the people about its ‘big build’, when it was continually promising 12 million homes by ’30.
To the best of my knowledge the regulations and zoning haven’t changed adversely during that time. As for the shortage of construction workers, I haven’t seen it mentioned recently, but early into the ‘big build’ it was suggested that there was a shortage of construction workers because many had been attracted away from the housing industry to build the new infrastructure for all the newly deceitful-corrupt-Labor approved gas and coal fields.
If you’re referring to the effects of the Labor-Israel-USA illegal war on Iran, then the question is, did you even look at the graph of ‘Total Dwellings Completed’? because it would sound like you didn’t.
The point is that Labor had all the information necessary at hand to know that: firstly, 12 million over 5 years was barely any better than what the Coalition had managed; and secondly, Labor wasn’t even going to achieve that by leaving it to the market. It was a con from the start, and Labor have deceitfully pushed it ever since.
Swollen Pickles produced a series of podcasts that analysed Labor’s housing bills, in particular the HAFF, in which he concluded that the HAFF wasn’t even in a position to build any houses, in fact, technically wasn’t even designed to build anything, when filthy lying Labor was running around saying that The Greens were keeping people out of new homes by wanting to negotiate to improve the bill. Labor wouldn’t even sit at a table and talk to the Greens on the Build to Rent and Help to Buy housing bills, but branded The Greens as blockers. Labor was more interested in playing politics to smear The Greens than improving the bills Albanese recently admitted haven’t worked.
The Greens took a policy of forming a government owned company to build 50 000 homes. How feasible that was we’ll never know, but they weren’t throwing about a 12 million figure that they’d plucked out of their backside to con people.
Frankly, I couldn’t give a rat’s arse whether you, or anyone else, are sick of my calling out Labor’s dishonesty or not. For 4 and a half years, Labor has pissed down our backs and told us it’s raining – there is no better example of that, then the ‘big build, except maybe AUKUS, complicity in a genocide, the gas companies can’t afford to be taxed, we can’t afford better public services, the NACC, FOI, dirty money in politics, we take the climate change seriously, and we care about the environment – I’m sick and tired of that.
Labor is destroying our children’s future, including my own family, and I don’t intend to be dissuaded from pointing that out by anyone whinging about the truth about Labor being exposed.
While we’re on about ‘missing’ things, you seemed to have missed my reply to you on the ‘The language of foreclosure’ article.