Calls for more social housing in Bathurst as demand skyrockets

The St Vincent de Paul Society NSW is calling for all levels of government to come together and deliver a significant investment into social housing, particularly in Bathurst.

The latest social housing waiting list figures show the demand for housing has grown by 76 per cent across the Bathurst region over the past year.

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This is much higher than the demand across the state as whole, which rose 15 per cent over the past year from 49,928 to 57,550 applicants.

St Vincent de Paul said that each applicant represents an entire household, meaning the overall number of people, including children, in need of a secure place to live has risen to more than 125,000 across the state as of June 30, 2022.

The president of the St Vincent de Paul Society Therese Conference, Marina Gray, said the situation in Bathurst is getting worse.

"There is more and more people experiencing homeless or are on the way to homelessness," she said.

"There is great demand on people's incomes, rents and things like that, so it's creeping up."

While every household's situation is different, for many people it is the rising cost of living that is having a devastating impact on their lives.

Many are having to forgo other basics, such as food, heating and cooling, or essential medicines just to be able to cover housing costs.

They are also having a difficult time finding a rental property.

Ms Gray said that the problem isn't so much that the number of available rentals has changed, but rather that significantly more people are trying to secure one.

"You've got people moving from other areas into here. There's a lot more competition for rentals," she said.

She said Vinnies is doing everything it can in Bathurst to offer support, but there is only so much that can be done without more social housing.

"We need more social housing, but we need all three governments to be working together to solve the issue," Ms Gray said.

"It's not just on one, they need to all be working together to help solve it."

Research commissioned by the St Vincent de Paul Society shows that if the government built 5000 new social housing dwellings every year for a decade, the NSW social housing waiting list would be reduced by three quarters.

That is what Ms Gray would like to see happen, saying Bathurst is an ideal place to start building accommodation.

If that can occur, it will have a positive impact on not only housing stress in the Bathurst community, but the other issues that can arise from it.

Ms Gray has seen people experiencing depression and developing anxiety, along with single parents feeling inadequate because they can't provide safe, permanent housing for their children.

"Fifty-five per cent of the people we are seeing report they are experiencing housing stress and that leads on to homelessness, or it leads in to depression, all sorts of things," Ms Gray said.

"... If we can solve one part of the problem, it could be a domino effect to fix or not create others."

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