New South Wales (NSW) is investing over $55 million (US$36 million) a year in hotel rooms for homeless people as rent increases are skyrocketing in Australia’s most populous state.
Housing Minister Rose Jackson said the number of people in temporary accommodation, a place where homeless people get a shower and shelter, has surged in recent years.
She blamed the increase in homeless people on the lack of affordable housing, saying that “thousands and thousands more people require that motel room, require that hotel room because the only other option is to sleep on the street.”
Speaking to the Property Council of Australia summit on Wednesday, she said people have a sense that it’s bad, but they don’t realise “just how stretched and dysfunctional and overwhelmed the system that is actually trying to respond to it is.”…