Canberra Housing Coalition to tackle homelessness in ACT

Known as the Canberra Housing Coalition, members are or have been involved with groups such as ACT Shelter and the ACT Council of Social Service, with the aim to connect and organise existing groups into a dedicated network.

"One of the things we noted was that, whilst there are lots of groups around that are interested in improving the situation, they're not particularly coordinated or organised in a way that everyone can use their strengths," Adam Mayers, one of the coalition members said.

"We want to decrease the homeless population in the ACT to eventually end homelessness.

"And to just be able to [we] have put pressure on the ACT government in a coordinated way."

The launch of the coalition included talks by ACT Shelter chief executive Travis Gilbert, former deputy ACTCOSS chief executive Adam Poulter, Canberra Student Housing Cooperative's Lucaya Rich and student and organiser Joshua Burgess.

Members met for the first time last week but will be electing their working committee and finalising their launch next month, on September 22.

One of their priorities will include re-funding the ACT Tenants' Union, which shut its doors in February 2020.

Formerly, funding received by the advice service primarily went to Legal Aid, which is the largest representative of public housing tenants.

"Legal Aid, of course do good work, but they have a lot of other non-housing work that they have to do, so the supports that were available to people have been diluted," Mr Mayers said.

Further aims include pushing for changes to the Residential Tenancies Act, to enshrine protections for tenants against "predator landlords" and ban opaque practices such as rental bidding, a statement from the group said.

The coalition will also advocate for the protection and expansion of social housing stock, boosting the supply of affordable rentals, and voicing the concerns of Canberra's most housing-vulnerable citizens.

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Mr Mayers said he became involved in the group after experiencing renting as a student, and seeing friends in the same situation.

"I and a couple other younger people who of know each other through various [ways], particularly the unions, and a lot of that work, we had been working for a few months just to see what we could do," he said.

"It's really clear that housing is the number one issue for a lot of people in Canberra.

"And there is a lot of energy amongst people who want to improve the housing situation in Canberra."

CoreLogic's last quarterly rental review saw Canberra maintain its position as Australia's most expensive city to rent in, as weekly median rents rose another 2.2 per cent.

It was also the only capital city to record an increase in its rental vacancy rate.

The vacancy rate across all Canberra dwelling types - houses and units - was 1.1 per for the quarter, compared to 0.9 per cent a year ago.

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