Victoria's peak homelessness body has urged all political leaders to guarantee this year is the last time the state will be ranked last nationally on social housing.
Council to Homeless Persons has warned the state's ignominious title of Australia's worst state for proportion of social housing is having dire real-world consequences.
The Productivity Commission's latest annual Report on Government Services reveals just 2.9% of Victorian households are in social housing – well behind the national average of 3.9%.
This is despite more than a third (36%) of all Australians seeking homelessness support in 2023/24 being from Victoria.
In 2023/24, one-quarter of all households waited more than 44 months to be allocated a social housing dwelling. This does not include people still on the waitlist.
"Year after year Victoria ranks last on the social housing league table. It's time all politicians join us in saying 'enough is enough'," Council to Homeless Persons CEO Deborah Di Natale said.
"We cannot afford to spend another year languishing behind the rest of Australia when there's a once-in-a-lifetime housing crisis threatening to evolve into a human catastrophe.
"The only way to fix this shameful dearth of social housing is to build our way out of the crisis. That means a bare minimum 6000 new dwellings each year for a decade.
"The cost of inaction is an unthinkable decline. Women experiencing family violence forced to choose between safety and housing. Families spending years on waiting lists.
"The continued over-representation of homelessness in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.
"It's time for our leaders to ask themselves what sort of society do we want to provide? If we believe in the safety net of social housing then we must urgently get to work on building more."
State/Territory |
Total Households in social housing (Table 18A.4) |
Total number of households (2024) |
Social Housing Proportion (2024) |
ACT |
11,759 |
181,903 |
6.46% |
NSW |
143,507 |
3,257,015 |
4.41% |
NT |
9,380 |
83,394 |
11.25% |
Queensland |
67,556 |
2,142,547 |
3.15% |
South Australia |
43,654 |
768,052 |
5.68% |
Tasmania |
14,820 |
242,349 |
6.12% |
Victoria |
77,459 |
2,673,784 |
2.9% |
WA |
39,805 |
1,105,112 |
3.6% |
Australia |
407,940 |
10,455,963 |
3.9% |
Fast facts:
Homelessness in Victoria rose 24% at the last Census
In 2021, more than 30,000 Victorians were without a home on Census night - almost 6,000 more than the previous Census in 2016
In September there were 63,803 applications for public and community housing on the waiting list
