The peak body for Aboriginal housing in Victoria has welcomed the $15 million invested to combat Indigenous homelessness in this week's state budget, but argued more funding is urgently needed to prevent the spiralling rates of Aboriginal homelessness and housing insecurity.
The Aboriginal Housing and Homelessness Forum (AHHF) said the budget on Tuesday provides much-needed funding to those most disproportionately affected by the current housing crisis — Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Indigenous people in Victoria seek homelessness assistance at a faster growing rate than anywhere else in Australia and are nearly 15 times more likely to enter the homelessness service system than non-Aboriginal Victorians.
One in five Aboriginal Victorians will seek help from a specialist homelessness service this year, with 24 per cent of all Aboriginal women in Victoria accessing services in 2022-23.
This has increased 14 per cent in five years.
To put the data into context, if the rates were applied to the whole Victorian population, 1.25 million people in the state would be accessing homelessness services each year.
AHHF chair and Aboriginal Housing Victoria (AHV) chief executive, Darren Smith, said the budget was a "measured outcome" for Aboriginal people, acknowledging the financial difficulty of the state and the Allan government's "commitment to bettering the lives of our community through this funding".
"This financial commitment from the Victorian government signifies a beginning of a new pathway, that focuses on self-determination in action, and we look forward to seeing this investment develop and grow," the Palawa man said.
"Any advancement to Aboriginal homelessness funding is greatly welcomed by the AHHF, however, to fully address the rates of homelessness seen in Aboriginal Victorians, we must look to access and supply of long term, sustainable housing pathways beyond crisis support."
Data shows 93 per cent of Indigenous people in Victoria who enter the homelessness system with long-term housing needs, exit the same system without having secured long-term housing.
"We have [a] critical need for investment in housing pathways and supply that see our communities in safe, secure housing arrangements," Mr Smith said.
The AHHF framework 'Mana-na woorn-tyeen maar-takoort: Every Aboriginal Has A Home' was funded in the budget, but they say more is needed to adequately support the sector.
Mr Smith was welcoming of the $15 million investment in the budget, saying it would provide "much needed advancement of an Aboriginal-specific homelessness system," but observed that more was needed to be done to close the gap on the over-representation of First Nations people in the homelessness and housing insecurity sector.
"Our community represents less than 1 per cent of the state's population, and yet over 13 per cent of all Victorians who accessed housing or homelessness support in the last year are Aboriginal," Mr Smith said.
"We are in a crisis that must be responded to now, we cannot wait for Treaty to address the housing crisis in our community."
Mr Smith, along with new First Peoples' Assembly chief executive Damein Bell, made a submission on behalf of AHV to the current Yoorrook Justice Commission hearings into land and water injustices, which will begin hearings into Indigenous housing later this month.
They called for the state government to return unused public land to Traditional Owner groups for the purpose of building housing.
"While you can understand the contemporary housing experiences of Aboriginal people and the origin in dispossession, we do need solutions that are going to work for Aboriginal people because we can't endure continuing homelessness at the level that it is at the moment," Mr Smith said at the time.
AHHF says the challenge is not just the building of the minimum 5000 additional social housing units needed for the Aboriginal community, but to ensure the entire sector is financed and supported to protect those most vulnerable and allow them to thrive.
"We know that the safety and stability of a secure home keeps our people in school, in work and in touch with community, and that a well-resourced Aboriginal Community Controlled sector can effectively respond to instances of homelessness and housing insecurity in a culturally safe way," Mr Smith said.
