Applicants for social housing in Wagga could be facing up to five years on the waiting list for even just a one-bedroom property.
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According to Mission Australia's Wagga office, at the end of June 2020, there were 389 people awaiting housing, while another 20 applicants were placed on the priority list due to their crisis needs.
The issue is particularly compounded for people aged under 25 to access accommodation options.
"Affordable housing is almost non-existent for young people," said Daniel Strickland, Mission Australia's acting regional leader for Riverina, South NSW and ACT.
Without any rental history or strong finances to back them, vulnerable young people are more likely to end up in inadequate living situations.
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Through its Eastern Murrumbidgee Youth Services, support workers can offer up to six temporary crisis rooms to people aged 16 to 25 who need assistance.
While Mr Strickland said the accommodation does not prove sufficient to meet the needs of clients at the best of times, during COVID-19 restrictions, the situation became even worse.
"We had to reduce capacity, so we couldn't have shared rooms which meant there was only room for three instead of six," Mr Strickland said.
"What we find with our Eastern Murrumbidgee Youth Services is we're holding onto them for longer than we would like to.
"We'll support them as long as they need and keep them there until they can find more permanent accommodation, but at the moment, that's difficult."
During a visit to Wagga on Tuesday, Mission Australia CEO James Toomey said the organisation would be lobbying the government to make provisions of social housing in compulsory in all suburban growth areas.
"There is a methodology which is called 'inclusionary zoning', which is where new properties are only approved based on the certain proportion of that are made available for either social or affordable housing.
"It's called mandatory inclusionary zoning and it is used in some parts of Australia has been used in other parts around the world to ensure that every time that you know, a new housing development is built that a certain proportion of that is set is made available for social housing."
The housing affordability crisis has further deepened since work-from-home arrangements began to dominate at the height of the pandemic.
The result is that homelessness is becoming an increasing reality for those who have been priced out of their own backyards in regional Australia.
"Rental prices are going up because property prices are going up," Mr Toomey said.
"People discovered during COVID that it was possible not to work in metro Australia, you could move to regional Australia and if you have a good broadband connection, you can stay in touch and do your job, so many people then decided to make that lifestyle change and that has an impact of inflating property prices in the area to which people are moving to and displacing, people on low incomes in those areas."
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