Fixing our broken housing system during a pandemic

Fixing our broken housing system during a pandemic

By Ellen Sandell - State MP for Melbourne

2020 was the year that none of us expected.

To be honest, it was a bit of dumpster fire – especially for parents having to work while home-schooling, people left juggling toddlers with no childcare, stranded international students having to line up for food parcels, and those who lost businesses and jobs, not to mention those impacted by the health effects of COVID-19.

For me, the pandemic shone a light on society in a way we haven’t seen in my lifetime - both the good, and the bad.

The pandemic showed the great power of community coming together. It also made us appreciate our parks, creeks and public space in ways we may have overlooked before.

But it also uncovered structural deficiencies in how our society and government is run, and exposed how these systems hold up against unexpected shocks.

For our public housing residents, COVID-19 exposed and deepened the cracks and injustices that have been brewing for a long time.

During the public housing “hard lockdown” in July, public housing residents were subjected to conditions that no-one else in the country faced: unable to leave their homes for 24 hours a day, and unable to even receive deliveries of essential food and medicines for several days.

As I worked on the ground to get people insulin for their diabetic children, to get a mother access to her sick newborn baby in intensive care, and to get food, medicine and laptops delivered to people in lockdown, I couldn’t help but be angry at how this was allowed to happen.

It also made me even more passionate about fixing our broken housing system.

The recent Ombudsman’s report into the public housing lockdown revealed how systemic failures and breakdowns in the housing system in Victoria contributed to this problem.

For years, I’ve been campaigning alongside the community for more and better public housing.

If one good thing came out of the pandemic, it’s that this campaign finally had a big win: with more than $5 billion being invested in social housing in November’s state budget. Although, most of this will not be publicly-run housing, which is another fight we now need to have in the coming months •

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