NSW Governments Plan for Reshaping Public Housing 2005 made changes
to eligibility (tenants must have a complex need) and tenure (now short-term,
fixed-term leases). Shelter described the
changes as “driven by fiscal imperatives, they were dressed up as social justice-based reform”.
This financial difficulty and the need to update and add to housing stock has seen the department involved in
sales, demolitions and transfers to social housing. Other reforms are around
providing service support for the new tenants (and ageing long term tenants)
with complex support needs. There is the
‘Ageing in Place’ and the ‘Hi Rise Strategy’.
The Human
Service Accord is one of these important new changes. The formal definition is:
The Accord is a policy framework to co-ordinate
services for social housing residents through partnership agreements with
the Department of Housing (DoH).
The government departments that have signed up to the Accord
including Community Services (DOCS), Ageing Disability
and Home Care, Juvenile
Justice, Corrective Services, NSW Health, NSW Police, Aboriginal Housing Office
as well as Community Housing providers.
The most
important aspect of the Accord is that service providers get to nominate their clients
for housing with the DoH. In return, the DoH gets assistance in maintaining the
tenancies, services for their tenants and joint care planning where needed.
There will be no resources to implement the Accord because like other
government departments in reform mode, the Accord
is seen as a mechanism to ‘streamline and co-ordinate existing service
provision’.
The Accord fits in with other
recent reforms to housing tenure. Previously, DoH provided affordable housing for
people and families on a low income. Housing is now only provided to people who are assessed as needing and agreeing to
service support. Other changes to eligibility include improving access to
housing for older people and people with
disability. Basically, DoH now only houses people with welfare needs and
public housing has disappeared. The impact of this change and the huge
reduction in government spending on public
housing is one factor in the current affordably housing crisis.
The Eastern
Suburbs Home and Community Care (HACC) Forum recently had these changes explained to
them – maybe because they provide a lot of services to frail aged people and
people with a disability. They agreed that “A client focused, co-ordinated
and planned approach to social housing and improved access to housing for older
people and people with disability”, is welcomed.
The Forum is
concerned that the desired
co-ordinated and planned approach will be
undermined by the lack of a coherent strategy to communicate with the
non-government sector, who are often the
major service providers, especially on the
housing estates. This view is supported by the news that an older
person’s housing site is planned at Gallop Court, Maroubra. The refurbishment is underway,
residents affected have been moved out and those meeting the new criteria will
be able to return once the building is completed. The HACC services working in the area did not know anything about this,
yet DoH and DADHC have been discussing it for some time.
The high staff turnover and poor
communication from local DoH teams, who are often uninformed of new
departmental initiatives, is an ongoing challenge for community services in working with social housing residents. There is also concern that there is no
safety net for those who do not accept support services or for those on short
term tenancy agreements.
If the Accord is to deliver the
promised client focused and co-ordinated services for social housing residents, the government partners will need to
engage with the non -government sector through the existing community networks,
where co-ordination and planning of local service delivery Occurs.
For
More Information on Inner Voice visit www.innersydney.org.au