Emergency Accommodation

Ms HOOD (Adelaide) (14:58): My question is to the Minister for Human Services. Can the minister update the house on the improvements to the emergency accommodation program?

The Hon. N.F. COOK (Hurtle Vale—Minister for Human Services) (14:58): I thank the member for Adelaide for the question. I thank anyone for asking questions in this house about emergency accommodation. Emergency and temporary accommodation, as I have said many times, is no place for people to thrive, and certainly no place for families. Our emergency accommodation program is the last safety net for people who have no other options.

For those in crisis, including those escaping family violence, the program does offer hotel accommodation to keep them off the streets while they try to find a more stable home. When Labor was last in government, the program cost $4.8 million, and that was in 2017-18. Around $13,000 was spent every night on emergency accommodation. The following year, the cost jumped to $6.8 million and last year it exceeded $11 million. That's around $30,000 every night of the year, night after night, on temporary, emergency accommodation. By comparison, back in the mid-nineties a similar program cost less than $15,000 for the whole year. On any given night now between 150 and 200 rooms are being used, costing an average of about $160 per room.

More people are seeking help and they are staying longer, because it is harder to find another place to go. This is one of the many reasons why the Malinauskas Labor government announced a comprehensive set of housing reforms last week. These reforms:

increase land supply;

deliver rental reform;

are the first proper increase in public housing for 30 years;

provide extra home purchase assistance; and

have a focus on regional housing.

There are also partnerships with the commonwealth to boost social and affordable housing. All these and more are needed to get our housing market back to a point where people can find a safe, affordable and suitable home.

While I am proud that our community and government offers emergency accommodation, a motel room is no place to stay for months on end; for households with children, it is no place to stay four weeks, let alone months. People in need, particularly those with children, need places to prepare and store food, places where children can play and study. We have been spending huge and growing amounts of money on solutions that do not provide what people need, and that is why I ordered a review of the emergency accommodation program soon after becoming minister.

That review's work has resulted in many conversations with people in the sector about different approaches. One critical conversation was with Gael Fraser, who is the Board Chair of UnitingSA. We talked about a site in the north with a number of two-bedroom units that had been used for administration by UnitingSA for years. A process began to relocate the administration workers, bring in the tradies, and get the units back up to accommodation standard.

The result is an amazing new service called Peppertree, and I was pleased that the Liberal shadow minister could join me, as well as the member Ramsay, for its launch. The member for Playford was also there. The amazing result is designed to support 32 families per year in an environment that is a massive leap forward from a hotel room. The units have kitchens, bathrooms, laundries, living areas and plenty of outdoor space for children to play, including a playground that is amazing.

Peppertree offers a safe, stable place for families to work through their homelessness issues with the Adelaide Northwest Homelessness Alliance, UnitingSA Housing, and Housing SA. We will do more and will have more to say about this, and in doing what we are doing will provide more suitable places for families to work through their crisis and come out stronger on the other side. I look forward to the Minister for Women visiting very soon to see the great outcomes for families.