HOMELESSNESS
741. Mr A. KRSTICEVIC to the Premier:
I refer to the outstanding expose by
Josh Zimmerman in The Sunday Times regarding the homelessness crisis in Western
Australia, specifically focusing on the CBD tent city. Now that the people of Western
Australia are aware that the government secretly sold off more than 1 000
public houses, will the Premier now apologise for the role his government
played in the current homelessness crisis?
Mr M.
McGOWAN replied:
Obviously, the government has
invested very heavily in additional housing, as members can see from the
announcements that we have made over the past year. The government has invested
$93 million per annum into homelessness and family and domestic violence
services across the state. A large component of that is allocated directly to homelessness services statewide and in
the Perth metropolitan area. On top of this, the government has allocated
a record $72 million to support evidence-based approaches to homelessness. This
includes a new Common Ground facility to be
built in the Perth CBD. We are looking for another location for a second
facility to provide permanent housing for homeless people. We look
forward to getting them underway and constructed during the next couple of
years.
The Housing First homelessness
initiative was also rolled out, providing wraparound services for people in
this situation. As part of COVID-19 recovery funding, a further $6.8 million
was provided for homelessness services.
In terms of the provision of public
housing, obviously we had to deal with some longstanding issues around Brownlie Towers and what I think are called the
Stirling buildings in Highgate, which are old, decrepit and no longer
fit for purpose. We had to close those facilities that had been on their last
legs for a long period. That has impacted the number of properties available.
Obviously, as part of our COVID response and also the stimulus measures that we
took last year, we are constructing a great deal of additional public housing
across Western Australia and also refurbishing a great deal of public housing
that had not been refurbished or maintained. Like everything, as housing ages,
it often becomes unusable. Fixing properties and making them available for
people is an important part of what we are doing to get people back into some
of those properties that were, in effect, left to rot over many years prior to
the election of this government.