Kerry Vernon
Despite an emergency accommodation crisis, minister for community services John Cobb said on ABC Radio on February 27 that NSW will not receive extra funding for the Supported Accommodation Assistance Program (SAAP).
The NSW Council of Social Service is alarmed that NSW, with more than one-third of Australia's population, will get only $2 million (0.6%) of the $350 million in extra federal funds over the next five years, for two once-off pilot projects.
NCOSS director Gary Moore said Cobb disputed NCOSS's claims that NSW's SAAP funding had been frozen. He told Green Left Weekly: "The new agreement in NSW has no additional core funding ... except a paltry $2 million for so called 'innovation'. Yet the Howard government's own evaluation was that a 15% [funding increase] was urgently needed."
On February 28, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare released annual data showing that, on an average day, one in two people who request immediate accommodation are turned away, as are almost two in every three children accompanying a person seeking urgent accommodation.
NCOSS, Homelessness NSW/ACT, the Youth Accommodation Association and the NSW Women's Refuge Resource Centre have launched a campaign for extra funding from the 2006/07 budget. For more information, go to <http://www.ncoss.org.au/saap/saap.html>.]
From Green Left Weekly, March 22, 2006.
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