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Without a massive injection of government spending, Sydney’s rapidly growing southwest region faces a $3 billion yearly shortfall in unmet demand for social infrastructure such as domestic violence services and affordable housing, a new report warns.
The economic forecasts by Impact Economics and Policy as part of the National Council of Social Services (NCOSS) “Beyond roads and bridges” report found an existing underinvestment in social infrastructure would compound over the next two decades, inhibiting economic growth and the well-being of the community.
Affordable housing being built in Campbelltown.Credit: Peter Rae
Comprising the ethnically diverse Fairfield, Liverpool, Canterbury-Bankstown, Camden and Campbelltown local government areas, the region’s population is projected to grow by 30 per cent, or 300,000 people, by 2041 to 1.41 million residents.
Authored by Dr Angela Jackson and Brad Rutting, the report urged the NSW government not just to increase funding proportionally to meet population growth, but to budget for the increased investment to meet the actual demand in the community.
One of the largest projected shortfalls was spending on social housing. With government investment predicted to hit $6.9 billion from 2024-2041, the report argued this was a quarter of the spending needed to address unmet demand.
In terms of dwellings, the report forecast government spending would need to triple to 10,811 units by 2041 to ensure affordable social housing kept pace with population growth, requiring a total additional investment of $2.9 billion from 2024 to 2041.
NCOSS director of policy and advocacy Ben McAlpine said accounting for the number of residents facing severe rental stress would see the figure balloon to between 50,000 and 66,000 units.
“It’s huge. It’s scary. And it shows the scale of the housing crisis that we’re facing right now that needs some urgent action,” he told this masthead.
A greater investment in other forms of housing support like homelessness services, where almost 10 per ent of support requests are currently turned away, was equally imperative, the report’s authors said.
McAlpine said southwest Sydney had been chosen due to the disadvantage of LGAs like Fairfield where 23 per cent of people and 33 per cent of children live below the poverty line. Extrapolating these results across Greater Sydney and NSW could be “truly mind-blowing”, he said.
With almost 5000 domestic violence-related assaults reported to NSW Police in southwest Sydney across 2022-23, the authors used survey data to estimate nearly 20,000 women were actually experiencing physical or sexual violence but not reporting the incidents.
By 2041, the number was projected to rise to 25,400.
Consequently, further investment was necessary to ensure domestic and family violence services could keep up with demand, saying spending would be required to increase from $51 million in 2024 to $66 million to keep up with population growth.
Addressing unmet need would require spending to almost triple to $150 million; however, the report said investment in prevention and early intervention to mitigate this unmet demand later on.
Disability were areas of social infrastructure highlighted by the NCOSS report, with four per cent of the population in southwest Sydney reporting a disability in 2021, above the national average of 3.2 per cent.
Identifying that both community and hospital services were under-resourced in the region, the report forecast the NSW government would need to increase yearly investment in community mental health services from $149 million to $197 million to meet population growth.
In a statement, Housing, Homelessness and Mental Health Minister Rose Jackson welcomed the report, saying she was reviewing the proposed recommendations to improve the wellbeing of people in these communities.
“We remain determined to improving access to shelter and mental health support because we know it directly impacts a person’s wellbeing and quality of life,” she said.
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