Donna Hinchcliff STATE MANAGER , VICTORIA
This year was both an exciting and challenging one for Victoria. We saw emerging opportunities coupled with the ongoing challenges associated with housing affordability and a lack of housing supply. In this context, Housing Choices remains focused on innovative ways to maximise our reach to vulnerable and low-income households that require secure and sustainable housing. We also positioned ourselves to take full advantage of new funding and partnering opportunities, and to improve our service delivery, thereby ensuring continued growth and sustainability. Given the importance of partnerships, we sought feedback from our partner agencies during the year, asking them to assess the quality of our work and to identify opportunities for improvement. Overall partner satisfaction reached 92 per cent across Victoria and Tasmania, with support partners reporting very positively about their relationship with us. The introduction of the NDIS opened up a variety of opportunities to advocate for greater housing choice and control on behalf of people with a disability, while we gained momentum in the Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) sector. Responding to this new environment and as part of our drive to be a leading provider of specialist disability accommodation, we realigned staff to create a Specialist Disability and Older Persons operational team. Considerable work continues in response to the ongoing rollout of the NDIS, with the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) approving the enrolment of four, two-bedroom disability- modified villas at our development in Ormond Road, East Geelong. Successful in our submission to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) under the Family Violence Program , we secured 69 additional properties to house victims of family
violence. We achieved our target on time and under budget and continue to work closely with our support partners in the delivery of this significant program in response to the Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence. We were proud to launch our Financial Inclusion in Social Housing (FISH) project this year. It is designed to support residents who are experiencing financial stress, including households that are forced to live off their savings, find themselves in debt or dependent on charity, or are experiencing rental arrears and vulnerability to pay-day lenders. Our role in homelessness is all about partnerships. We continue to build and strengthen our relationships so we can support more people moving out of crisis and transitional housing, into long-term accommodation. Of particular focus for us is our Transitional Housing Program (THP) and the development of new initiatives with our partners such as the Returned Services League and Sacred Heart Mission. Across our Victorian housing operations this year, we managed 1,982 tenancies, completed 327 transfers and assisted a further 47 tenancies in the THP. We acquired 227 new households and invested $1.2 million in upgrading our properties. An additional $2.2 million and $1 million was spent on refurbishing 44 dwellings in North Melbourne and eight dwellings in Geelong, respectively. Five additional dwellings were created through developments in Newport and Werribee, with four Board-approved projects resulting in 28 additional dwellings. We continued our important focus on resident engagement, holding 21 resident meetings. We were also successful in four grant applications, including Mary Street Community Garden (Darebin Council), La Trobe Close Community
Garden (Melbourne City Council), Bute Street Garden Project (Maribyrnong City Council) and Recreation at Home Project (Geelong City Council). In addition we received a grant from Victoria’s Heritage Restoration Fund for restoration works at our Drill Hall site. Our Resident Advisory Committee approved and completed the following Resident Community Fund projects in collaboration with our broader resident community: • Common area planter upgrade for an 11-unit property in Boronia • Irrigation and signage for the St John’s Community Garden in North Melbourne • Raised community garden beds and communal area seating for a 10-unit property in Northcote, and • Support provision to resident Bobby Bajram’s extraordinary Mount Everest disability climb project in 2018. In summary, it has been a busy and rewarding year for the Victorian operations team, which has been able to maintain extraordinary momentum at a time of higher-than-ever demand for housing and increasing pressure on housing supply.
Our People - Annual Report 2016-17
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