Submission on the National Housing and Homelessness Plan Bill 2024 (No.2)

The National Housing and Homelessness Plan Bill, introduced by Independent Senator David Pocock and MP Kylea Tink, would require the federal government to develop, implement, and maintain a National Housing and Homelessness Plan.

Council to Homeless Persons welcomes the Bill and recommends it be passed into law. It the potential to be the first step out of the disastrous predicament of the Australian, and Victorian, housing system towards a rights-based approach to housing.

The Act proposed by this Bill takes important steps in laying the groundwork to end homelessness by requiring the Federal Government to regularly and consistently produce dedicated housing and homelessness plans. It provides for a greater level of government accountability over a housing market that has long been broken in Australia, and continues to grow more expensive, and more unequal.

Australians—and Victorians in particular—are facing a housing emergency. Australia’s broken housing system has real consequences for real people: this is borne out every day, as more and more people are at risk of and forced into homelessness. There are multiple contributing factors to homelessness—like family violence, complex mental health and medical conditions, and workplace injuries—but the root cause is a lack
of appropriately priced, dignified housing. To end homelessness, we need more housing. Resolving the housing crisis through multi-pronged, considered, and people-centred policy is of immediate importance. Australians, and Victorians, deserve to have a place where they feel safe; a place to call home.

This Bill proposes a path out of the quagmire; a path that works for Australian people who are struggling to find a home.