A shortfall of social houses in Canberra means people in the most pressing situations, including those facing homelessness or fleeing domestic violence, waited nearly two months for emergency accommodation at the beginning of the year.
As more than 3000 people wait for long-term social housing in Canberra, those staying in crisis and transitional accommodation struggle to find anywhere else they can afford to go.
That backlog leaves people who urgently need accommodation waiting longer than they did throughout the COVID-19 outbreak to access it.
Toora Women houses 168 people who are at risk of homelessness, domestic violence and alcohol and drug dependence.
"Typically, we would look to be supporting a client or a family up to around one year, although there's discretion obviously applied to that," chief executive Kellie Friend said.
"Over 35 per cent of our clients have actually been with Toora for longer than that period, so what that means is it precludes Toora from being responsive to the current demand of the community who might be requiring housing because we've got people staying longer in the residences that we offer."
The most recent data from OneLink, the ACT government funded service which directs people to crisis housing found that in the quarter ending March 2022 people waited an average of 50.5 days for placement.
That is compared with an average of 29 days in the December 2021 quarter.
At the end of March, 263 people were still waiting for access to emergency and transitional housing.
The bottlenecks are leading community organisations, including Toora, to develop programs to support clients into private rentals.
The pilot program, which Toora plans to extend to five households, supports people with stable income and good rental and support relationships with the organisation to move into long-term community and private housing.
Toora will supplement low-income earners up to $20,000 annually, and affordable income earners up to $10,000, and has launched the program with one client.
Currently funded through donations, Ms Friend hopes the initiative will attract government funding.
"It ultimately won't be just a Toora response, if this is a community issue, then it's community sector response that needs to come to the fore here," she said.
"We should actually be able to fund something that's sector wide, that provides access and opportunity to all clients who need it across the full spectrum."
The effects of COVID-19 are still being felt
"There is a degree of demand in the ACT that is unmet because of the capacity of the social housing sector," said Lynton Sheehan, the director of housing and community engagement at Woden Community Service, which runs OneLink.
COVID-19 introduced a new level of housing stress as well as putting people's ability to maintain informal accommodation under strain, he said.
"When we talk about homelessness, the highest numbers we see are informal living arrangements such as couch-surfing, staying with family or friends and people in specialist homelessness accommodation," Mr Sheehan said.
There were 54 rough sleepers in the ACT at the last count in 2016, but that figure is pre-COVID.
OneLink does have some limited capacity to place people into hotels in situations which may involve children at risk of sleeping rough or other challenges which require urgent support.
The service was supporting 13 people in hotels at the end of March, and had supported a total of 78 over the whole quarter, at a cost of $199,755.89, a decrease from the previous quarter's bill of $548,602.77.
St Vincent de Paul manager for homelessness programs Canberra/Goulburn Zoe Gilrain agreed that the amount of time clients are spending in traditional housing is growing.
The 13-bed Samaritan House is designed to accommodate single men for two weeks, but that has extended in some cases to over two months.
"The cost of living pressures have risen, and the rental affordability in the ACT - it's not just a public housing issue, it's a general housing issue as well," Ms Gilrain said.
"For some of the residents at Samaritan House, they don't actually meet criteria for social housing, because their income is too high, yet they're still finding themselves in need of a crisis accommodation service."
"In addition to that, their income seems to be too low in order to get or secure private rentals through private agreements."
The ACT government has a program to deliver an additional 400 public houses over 2019-2024 and renew 1000 properties.
Minister for Homelessness and Housing Services Rebecca Vassarotti said the government acknowledges an increased demand for accommodation following the COVID-19 outbreak.
"Since February 2021, the ACT government has injected an additional $12 million into the specialist homelessness sector to ensure that Canberrans in need can access support specific to their needs, including crisis accommodation, transitional housing, domestic violence counselling, education, support and advocacy services," she said in a statement.
"We also have the Client Support Fund which is used when people with particularly challenging circumstances need assistance to secure emergency accommodation."
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