Churches Housing has been very busy advocating for the many vulnerable people in our communities during this pandemic.

Housing is and has always been the single biggest cost in a household and disproportionately so when income is reduced.

This is a particularly difficult time, but especially so for the many casual and migrant workers who have missed out on any support and the many business which have decided to try and keep vulnerable people on without Job Keeper to assist.

Today I wrote to Federal Treasurer Frydenberg calling for more assistance for them.

Please join us in continuing to speak out – don’t assume that our politicians are hearing the voice of compassion.

I have also written to the Inner West Council.

The Churches of Christ has a beautiful plan to turn an old and unused church site into affordable housing, partnering with award-winning architects turned sustainable developers Nightingale Housing.

The Inner West Council, despite stating they wish to encourage greater development of much needed affordable housing, appears determined to block it any way possible.

This sort of model only works when someone is prepared to put up the land for affordable housing to be built up, such as a church.

Removing 65 per cent of the cost of development (when one removes the cost of land) makes the very difficult proposition of building affordable housing in Sydney actually possible.

Come on Inner West, you have talked the talk of affordable housing, now it is time to walk the talk and approve this without delay!

More than $6 million will be provided by the NSW Government to multicultural communities affected by COVID-19, including migrants and temporary visa holders. This is in addition to the commitment of $20 million for temporary crisis accommodation for international students that the NSW Government announced in May.

‘Since the beginning of this crisis we have been saying that there is a hole in our safety net, and vulnerable newcomers are falling through the gaps,” said Sydney Alliance organiser Chantelle Ogilvie-Ellis.

‘Where Canberra has abandoned international students, people seeking asylum and others, NSW has stepped in. We thank the Berejiklian Government for acknowledging its responsibility and duty of care to vulnerable migrants in our state who live, work and study amongst us.”

Since March, Churches Housing has been working with Sydney Alliance and its member organisations to call on government, to provide immediate assistance to temporary visa holders in crisis. In April, the alliance contacted NSW members of parliament with the first-hand stories of people in crisis who had been left behind during COVID due to their visa status.

Stories that Sydney Alliance has passed on to Members of Parliament include (amongst many) …

• Leaders from refugee and migrant communities receiving texts from families running out of food and facing eviction
• Migrant workers who have been self-reliant, working and paying tax in Australia for five years or more suddenly unemployed with no support
• Specialist community services and diaspora leaders seeing a dramatic increase in people seeking asylum and international students facing homelessness, risk of suicide and despair

For information, contact Chantelle Ogilvie-Ellis 0412 876 630 or David Barrow 0416028001

Churches Housing has been working with other peak bodies including the Tenants’ Union to ensure that unfair evictions are prevented during the pandemic. This is the letter we have co-signed with 80 other individuals and organisations:

We are a community coalition made up of people and organisations who work with renters and research housing problems.

The COVID19 epidemic is a public health crisis that will be made worse by evictions. We call on the Commonwealth, State and Territory governments to ensure no evictions happen during this crisis. The COVID19 epidemic is causing significant economic harm through the cancellation of events, the disruption of supply chains, and a general reduction in public activity and commerce.

Many workers, especially contractors and casual workers, will suffer from lost incomes. Many will fall into rent arrears and be at risk of termination and eviction.

People facing eviction are less able to take actions required to minimise transmission of COVID-19, particularly where they become homeless, and will become more vulnerable to illness. An eviction into homelessness at this time puts great pressure on families and communities in overcrowded homes, crisis accommodation and people sleeping rough.

Support services will already be struggling to deal with increased demand and as a community we cannot afford to make it worse. We call on states and territories to put a stop to evictions.

• Police and court officers should be directed not to carry out or allow any evictions
• Public and community housing providers should immediately cease eviction proceedings against their tenants
• All relevant Commonwealth, State and Territory Ministers should make public statements calling on landlords not to begin proceedings to evict any tenant and to offer leniency on arrears
• Housing departments and councils need to work with shared accommodation providers, including boarding and rooming house operators, to ensure residents are not evicted into more severe homelessness and that their accommodation is healthy
• This would not apply to individuals removed for perpetrating violence.

A temporary eviction moratorium is a necessary measure to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The economic costs will need to be shared across the community. Before the stop on evictions is lifted, governments must have a plan to ensure the whole community can recover, and not leave some burdened with debt. Australia is in crisis. We need to come together and ensure no one loses their home.

Climate change can become a daily battle for people living in old or poorly designed housing and people in social and affordable housing may be impacted to the point where it has serious effects on health.

Churches Housing is proud to be an active partner in a new research project, Cooling the Commons, with Western Sydney University and housing providers. We are applying for an ARC research grant and helping build partnerships and collaboration across Western Sydney.

In 2015, a pilot study of how people in Western Sydney were coping with heat interviewed elderly residents, mothers with small children and people who cared for family members with disability.

The quality of housing and neighbourhood environments affected their everyday lives and ability to keep cool. Many elderly people had knowledge, strengths and strategies to adapt their environments to better cope with the heat, while the young were less well-equipped with practical cooling strategies and relied on air-con and minimising movement.

All identified public spaces where coolth (a 19th century term that is opposite to ‘warmth’) could be found and all aspired for a cool city of which they could be a part. What they lacked was the capacity to activate and share this knowledge.

From the pilot study we learnt that shared knowledge of cooling strategies, physical design for cool houses, and shady, watery accessible spaces all could make up the cool commons.

Electronic signatures on DCJ human services contracts will now be legal.

COVID-19 has impelled the NSW government to change the Electronic Transactions Act 2000 (NSW) so deeds and other legal documents can be remotely executed.

DCJ engaged DocuSign to manage e-signing of contracts for programs operated by DCJ’s Strategy, Policy and Commissioning division, from May 2020 onwards.

Contract managers will send a link to an unsigned contract that can be opened in regular web browsers and then downloaded.

The economic crisis is deepening and lengthening, and the RBA is calling for major infrastructure investment as economic stimulus.

So, join Churches Housing in contributing to Sydney Alliance’s survey on how the NSW government should stimulate the State’s economy for the common good.

The 5-minute survey asks you to:

1. prioritise outcomes of economic stimulus
2. rate different proposed projects
3. indicate how you think money should be spent

Go to https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/YJMXS6L

Refugee women fleeing domestic violence are in dire need of safe housing but are ineligible for refuges because they have no income, says the Foundations Housing Project just published by Jesuit Refugee Service.

Ms Anjali Roberts, housing project co-ordinator with JRS, says that under current arrangements, refugee women escaping violence are not eligible for Centrelink payments and so they cannot stay in refuges because they have no exit pathway.

The project surveyed 40 domestic violence services and refuges in Sydney, with 60 per cent responding.

Almost all the 24 responding services said they wanted to collaborate with organisations supporting women seeking asylum. Nine could offer a room in a refuge is income was guaranteed and five services could collaborate if accommodation was brokered through another avenue such as a community housing provider.

The final report can be accessed at the JRS website

Launch of the Foundations Housing Report and Calls to Action

The COVID pandemic has starkly revealed the importance of a safe place to live, impelling five academics to work on an electronic ‘map’ of precarious housing in Australia.

Researchers from University of Sydney (A/Prof Kurt Iveson, Dr Dallas Rogers and Dr Laurence Troy) and RMIT (Dr David Kelly and Prof Libby Porter) are inviting contributions to this site.

Go to housingstories.net to record your story and hear others’ experiences.

Companies can now convene annual general meetings, and other meetings prescribed under the Corporations Act, entirely online rather than face-to-face. The Federal Government changes will also give businesses certainty that when company officers sign a document electronically, the document has been validly executed.

These changes were made under the instrument-making power inserted into the Corporations Act 2001.

Under the social distancing measures that are currently in place, it is difficult for shareholders to physically gather with members of the board at annual general meetings.

Under the changes, company boards will be able to:

• provide notice of annual general meetings to shareholders using email
• achieve a quorum with shareholders attending online, and
• hold annual general meetings online.

Meetings must continue to provide shareholders with a reasonable opportunity to participate. As a result, shareholders will be able to put questions to board members online and vote online.

Further changes will also allow company officers to sign a document electronically. Previously, in some cases, signatories were required to sign the same physical document. This change will ensure that documents are able to be properly executed at a time when ordinary business operations have been disrupted.

These changes will be in effect for six months from 6 May 2020.

Many of our members are engaged heavily in retirement living and aged care. For example, BaptistCare is considering an integrated community model for a large future development. So we have included this article to encourage more thought and discussion in this area.

Retirement villages – walled, gated and separate seniors’ enclaves – have had their day. The word ‘retirement’ is redundant and engagement between people of all ages is high. That’s how participants in the Longevity By Design Challenge envisage life in Australia in 2050.

Professors Rosemary Kennedy and Laurie Buys (QUT and University of Queensland respectively) led the challenge which suggested numerous changes including:

• building walkable neighbourhoods that reduce distances between homes and services
• converting typical house blocks to ‘super blocks’ where multiple generations can live
• adopting finance development models using long-term capital, rather than short-term debt, for greater financial and community returns.

https://theconversation.com/retire-the-retirement-village-the-wall-and-whats-behind-it-is-so-2020-135953