Low-income Canberrans left behind

"Today the cost of living report has shown the dramatic increases in the costs of essential goods and how this is impacting people on low incomes disproportionately," ACT Council of Social Service CEO Dr Emma Campbell said.

The ACT has a shortfall of 3100 social housing properties, and will need an additional 8500 social housing dwellings by 2036 to supply the ACT's current unmet and projected need.

ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr told The Canberra Times in May that the government was looking to built-to-rent-housing to alleviate the city's housing crisis.

"We have many build-to-rent organizations already in the ACT, and they are our community housing providers," CEO Dr Emma Campbell said.

"They are the best people to deliver affordable rentals to those on low incomes and who are struggling in the ACT, but they need investment, and they need access to affordable land.

"And that's what we're really hoping for in this forthcoming ACT budget."

Canberra's consumer price index, a measurement of pricing for goods and services, has registered big increases for essential goods over the last five years, hitting low-income earners hard.

Increases in the costs of electricity (up 27.7 per cent) and gas (26.2 per cent) pile pressure onto low-income earners living in older social housing which is not energy efficient.

"The greatest proportion of our social housing stock is old," Parentline ACT president Kathy Moore said. "And so that is very energy inefficient, and the cost to bring that up to standard is going to be quite large for the government."

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