The announcement last week that the Andrews Labor Government in Victoria will spend $1.8 billion to build an additional 1,600 prison beds across Victoria, comes in the wake of a huge increase in the number of prisoners awaiting their court date. In Victoria, the number of unsentenced, adult prisoners increased by 196% in the six […]
Archive | Social Housing Advocacy Support Program
Housing Justice Family Violence submission
Housing instability and family violence often go hand in hand. Hence our recent submission to Victoria’s Royal Commission into Family Violence. Our submission included case studies and focussed on the Residential Tenancies Act 1997 (RTA) and its impact on people experiencing family violence. We also made a number of recommendations. In one case study, a client’s relationship had broken down but […]
New report calls for restoration of funding to social housing support program
Funding should be restored to the Victorian Social Housing Advocacy Support Program (SHASP) in the wake of a report that found 78% of public housing tenants supported by the program avoided eviction and 73% engaged in repaying rent debts. A state-wide data collection project conducted from July – September 2013 by the SHASP managers’ network […]
Dan tells his SHASP story
SHASP services like ours are so stretched that often we don’t stop to think about promoting ourselves and our work and the needs of the clients we assist. In 2011/12 Tenant Advocacy and Support assisted 721 SHASP clients. Dan was one of those clients. We don’t have the money to produce a schmecko video (if […]
Save SHASP campaign website
The Save SHASP Campaign momentum is building with the launch of a new website: http://www.noshaspcuts.com/ The website lays out the facts and explains how the state government’s funding cuts to this essential service are likely to affect some of the most vulnerable tenants in Victoria. The site is integrated with social media so it’s easy to […]