DEAR News Of The Area,

GOOD to see we have a local Advisory Group who are onto it.

Our housing crisis started years ago by lack of Government planning, and more recently because we are over-populated, with many more to come as recently rumoured.

We need a good investigative journalist to properly report on the situation as it is, and why it is. After World War II the Government built massive estates of family homes which were occupied by young families.

However they didn’t take into account the fact that families grow up and leave home and in some instances an elderly spouse dies, leaving a family home occupied by one person.

This is still evident today.

The then ‘Housing Commission’ never thought that one day the sole occupant of a family home would have to downsize and make way for new families by building, on that same estates, small villas or flats so that these people could stay within their own community where they had all of their attachments and friends.

In addition there are vacant Dept of Housing homes and flats boarded up in need of repair.

The now Department of Housing also sold off a lot of their stock in now lucrative suburbs making millions in income.
The stock was never replenished.

Some time ago Australia was criticised for taking in only three percent of the world’s refugees but no one made mention that Australia has only 0.03 percent of the world’s population.

All of our essential services can’t catch up and housing should have been considered as the most important for any future mass intake of new population.

Hopefully in the near future we will have an investigative journalist who will be permitted to put all the cards on the table and we can all see the big picture!

Regards,
Peggy STRANSKY,
Nelson Bay.