A Newcastle welfare organisation is expecting a new wave of pressure on people in need with the end of several support initiatives within the one week.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
The year-long rental moratorium, which protected tenants from being evicted by landlords due to rental arrears, ended in NSW on Friday, while JobKeeper finishes up Sunday, the $150 JobSeeker supplement comes to a close on Wednesday and the final $250 pensioners installment was made this month.
Samaritans emergency relief coordinator Beth Hanna said while the initiatives were very helpful, they had led to "a cliff edge" when they ended.
"It all kind of happened together," Ms Hanna said. "There is a bit of concern. It has created some anxiety among our clients."
The Newcastle Herald reported that the city had piled on almost 10,000 jobs in February, but that up to 3750 Hunter people could lose work when JobKeeper runs out.
"For a lot of people, their situations haven't altered," Ms Hanna said. "There's pockets of some industries that are still affected. Tourism, and hospitality to some degree."
While the changes have been incremental and there has been warning about the reduction dates, Ms Hanna said she believed there were people out there who had treaded water until now, or not wanted to reach out for help.
"People might have accessed their superannuation and banks have been good about making mortgage payments," she said. "All of those supports meant there was a collective sigh of relief.
"But now all of a sudden the rug is pulled out.
"I think potentially there are a lot of people out there affected we're yet to see. It's too hard to think about so they put it off.
"We expect there will be more people turning to us."
Ms Hanna said she believed this was "the calm before the storm" with spikes in demand experienced in the weeks after each reduction in support payments over the past year.
"We didn't have a lot of demand at the start, but then with each stage we've seen an increase," she said. "We expect demand to ramp up from here."
The rental situation is a particular concern, Ms Hanna said, with low availability of properties and tenants being forced to pay back rental arrears they have accrued.
Crisis accommodation providers have organised a 'Tent City' demonstration in Civic Park this Monday at 9.30am to highlight what they describe as "a humanitarian crisis" unfolding in the Hunter with levels of homelessness and insecure housing "not seen before by long-term professionals in the sector".
People with lived experience and local experts will share their insights of the worsening situation.
Nova for Women and Children CEO Kelly Hansen said specialist homelessness services in the Hunter were "inundated with demand".
"Many people who have never before experienced homelessness are sleeping in cars or couch surfing, or worse," she said. "And women and children are at particular risk of becoming homeless because they have no other options."
A Homelessness NSW report says crisis services are supporting 26 per cent more people than they are funded to. A recent Equality Economic report says Newcastle and Lake Macquarie are the NSW regions forecast to see the highest increases in homelessness (40.5 per cent) and unemployment ( 12 per cent) in 2021 due to the impacts of COVID-19.
Hunter Homeless Connect coordinator Nissa Phillips said many volunteer service providers did not report data and so the full extent of the crisis was hidden.
"We have collected dozens of personal testimonies from people experiencing homelessness for a Hunter Community Alliance campaign," she said. "No two stories are the same. People are homeless or at risk for a whole range of personal and public policy reasons. And we have learned that many people who access homelessness services are not counted in the official stats because they use volunteer-run services, and their data isn't collected by anyone."
Hunter Tenants Advice and Advocacy Service coordinator Nicole Grgas said people were "terrified".
"Hunter Tenants is seeing the highest level of demand for assistance in our history," she said.
"Almost half of our calls are from tenants facing eviction, many of these are for no grounds, or no-fault evictions.
"We are speaking with people who have never had issues finding a rental before who are now facing the real risk of homelessness for the first time in their lives. They are terrified."