How did housing get to this?

At the moment in the city I live in, Perth Western Australia, there is now not one suburb where the suburbs median house (including units) price is affordable for the someone on a median wage. Rental vacancy has fallen to 1%. I am in a middle management kind of role at my small company I oversee seven staff and four programs. This housing situation means that if I had a 50% pay increase bringing me up to the median wage I would still not be able to afford a median house in any suburb in the city I live in Perth. Now that's comfortable well off me. It's not hard to imagine what it's like for others. This hit home to me the other day when a college told me this story about someone she was trying to help. I got to pass this story on to a government inquiry into housing recently and I think it needs to be heard by the general public too.

There was a girl who used to come to the street van on a regular basis. She was a classic example of a young person who was trapped in this cycle. She was in her very early 20’s and had come from a back ground of family breakdown, she has spent her life in and out of foster homes and spent much of that time on the streets from a very young age. She was in a long term relationship with a man over twice her age and had 2 young children who were in foster care. He partner although older had come from the same background and had lived on the streets most of his life. She surrounded herself with other homeless people who abused drugs - they were the only real “family” she knew.

This couple were lucky enough to obtain homeswest accommodation (public housing) after a long waiting period. When they did however, like so many other people who have spent most of their life on the streets- they did not have the skills or support to be able to keep it and were eventually kicked out. Back on the street.

This girl and her partner would come to the street van each week asking if we could help them find a warm bed for the night. Each time they came I would call crisis care and the homeless helpline and each time the answer would be the same. There were either no beds available, or there were no places that would take them both as a couple. In this particular situation another barrier to them finding a place to stay was
the fact that the two of them were so apart in age. There are often age limitation at the various hostels. Even though I never did find anywhere for them, they still kept on coming back each week in the hope that a bed would come up.

A few months ago I was saddened to find out that this girl had past away while sleeping out in the cold behind a church in Perth. This is a situation that I believe may have been avoided had there been the appropriate services available to help them.

We can do better.