Bid to combat evictions
A new alliance of organisations has been formed to campaign for public housing policies that assist tenants to meet standards.
Eighteen organisations including Aboriginal services, tenancy advocates, unions, churches, academics and legal centres have joined a coalition to lobby the Government to stop evicting tenants into homelessness.
Advocates believe more than 2000 children have been ejected from their homes since 2011.
Organiser Marc Newhouse, of the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee, said there was a groundswell of concern in the community about the disproportionate and devastating effect on many Aboriginal children, disabled people and their carers, tenants with mental health issues and women seeking to escape violent former partners.
"Forcing families into homelessness does nothing to address the issues," he said.
From July 2011 to December last year, 1015 tenancies were vacated through eviction. Of those, 584 had at least one householder who self-identified as Aboriginal.
Advocates say they included large families with multi-generations and high numbers of children and grandchildren. In the 2010 and 2011 financial years, there were 411 evictions, including 225 Aboriginal tenancies.
