Without a home, everyday tasks become near-impossible – buying groceries for the week, taking a shower, maintaining a job, forming and preserving relationships, getting children to school, contributing to the community.

In northern Tasmania tonight, there will be people without a home, sleeping in their car, on the couch of a friend or next to someone untrustworthy. 

Anglicare’s newly released Rental Affordability Snapshot paints a grim picture of the lack of affordable housing for people on low incomes.

It showed in Northern Tasmania, there were no affordable properties for young people living on Youth Allowance, and for single people and single parents with one child, on a Newstart Allowance, there was just one affordable property in the region.

For single people on a Disability Support Pension, only five homes were affordable in the North, and eight homes suitable for single parents with two children living on a Parenting Payment. 

Even households earning a minimum wage had only a small pool of rental homes that were affordable.

Frontline services say there’s been an expansion in the range of people seeking housing assistance.

Tasmanians with a job, good references and a solid credit history are now unable to find a rental.

These people are turning to services for help – services already pressed to find even temporary options for the most vulnerable.

Anglicare services in the North and North-West are seeing people arrive from the South in search of affordable housing.

Given the housing shortage, many people on low incomes are being pushed into rental stress to secure or keep a rental property.

It is not unusual for Tasmanians on income support payments to be spending up to 75 per cent of their income on rent.

This is unsustainable and leaves them unable to afford other basics like healthy food, utilities, transport and healthcare.  

Every day in which there are Tasmanians without a home, we damage our community and diminish our shared future.   

If we fail to effectively address these housing challenges, we hold our state back from improving education, health and employment outcomes, and reducing crime.

For decades, we have had policy settings in place at state and federal levels that have led us to this point.

These include tax settings that have made housing a mechanism of wealth generation rather than a basic human right for all.

There’s been under-investment and neglect of public and social housing.

Income support payments have not kept pace with the cost of living.  

Now we look to every level of government to do more. 

It will require bold, long-term commitment and investment and is likely to go well beyond what is politically comfortable.

An enormous evidence base maps out clear ways forward, but governments will require a commitment to change and the willpower to stay the course.

And it’s incumbent on all of us to encourage action and hold decision-makers to account.

It is time to work together to ensure an affordable home is available to every Tasmanian.