‘I feel so abandoned’: the ‘safety net’ overlooked in NSW election promises on housing

Sally's* voice trembles as she explains how desperately she needs housing right now, and how abandoned Sydney's housing crisis has left her.

"I feel so let down. Isn't this supposed to be the lucky country?" she says.

"I feel so abandoned, I feel like I've even let my children down."

Sally, who asked to remain anonymous, is in desperate need for social housing, the kind of housing that is almost impossible to find in Sydney right now.

She has five children living with her, and is set to be evicted due to being unable to keep up with rent.

As a recent victim of domestic violence, and coming from a situation in which she was unable to keep a job, unable to provide for her children and with no financial safety net, Sally is left with very few options.

"I applied for around 37 houses and was rejected for every single one. I was nicely told to give up," she says. "I was told there was no point because no landlord is going to look at me, that I was wasting my time.

"This is the lowest point in my life and I just need help."

She says the government needs to build more social housing.

"There's no safety net. When is it enough? The government needs to open their stupid eyes and understand that women and children die because of a lack of housing. We have to go back to our perpetrators otherwise," Sally says.

"We need housing, the cost of living has gone up so much we can't rent anything. I'm a single mother, and my rent could be $550, I just can't keep up."

While Sally's situation is a challenging one, she is not alone - particularly not in western Sydney.

Recent figures released by the Community Housing Industry Association New South Wales (CHIA NSW) show that there has been an 8% increase in the social housing waitlist in western Sydney.

There are now 18,377 individuals and families waiting in the region. Many are in the queue in areas with wait times of over 10 years.

The figures also show a 15% increase in demand for social housing across the state, with 57,750 individuals and families on the waitlist.

With the NSW state election less than three weeks away, CHIA NSW's chief executive, Mark Degotardi, says the major parties have so far only paid "lip service" to the problem.

"There are almost 58,000 families and individuals on the social housing waitlist in NSW. These are real people struggling to stay afloat," he says.

"We know the housing crisis is at the top of voters' minds, and yet our political leaders are not treating this problem with the urgency it deserves.

"We have politicians paying lip service, but neither party has stepped up and made clear commitments to confront the crisis. It is not too late. The major parties can help solve this crisis by increasing the state's supply of social and affordable housing. But we cannot afford to wait."

The schemes so far proposed by both parties are for homebuyers or owners, with some support for renters recently announced by the premier, Dominic Perrottet.

Labor has proposed merging three existing government agencies into a single body in an effort to address the social housing supply.

But advocates say these policies don't do enough to address the lived reality of renters under duress in NSW, and particularly in western Sydney.

The chief executive of Homelessness NSW, Trina Jones, tells the Guardian that at the current rate of investment, it will take 80 years for everyone who's on the social housing waitlist to get a home.

She says the lack of investment has left many in precarious situations.

"This waiting list means that people have nowhere else to go. Social housing is the safety net, and previously people could go to the rental market to access housing that was in their affordability brackets, but we have had the tightest rental market that we've had in years," she says.

"For people on low income, that means there is nowhere for them to go. So we have families living in tents, going to their jobs, sending their children to school and living out of tents or caravan parks.

"And we have people who are experiencing and are at risk of domestic and family violence forced to stay in dangerous and unsafe situations because they don't have a place to go."

Jones says the sector had been "forgotten", and that the housing crisis is no closer to being addressed, calling on both parties to invest in housing services, as well as to increase the supply of social housing.

"We're 20 days out from an election and there has been no announcements on housing and homelessness. And what does that say to the thousands of people that are struggling to keep a roof over their head or get a roof over their head in NSW?"

*not her real name