After 11 years on a housing wait list, Lynette is getting desperate

Social housing lists grow as stock fails to keep up with population growth Wed 17 Jun 2026 at 4:29pm In short: Lynette Poole, 71, has been a social housing waitlist for 11 years despite her doctor urging her to be placed on a priority list. Social housing as a proportion of total housing stock has been in "steady decline" nationally. What's next? State and federal governments are embarking on building programs, but advocates say it is not enough to meet recommended targets. Aged 71, Lynette Poole is very grateful to be living with her granddaughter. It means the disability pensioner has a roof over her head for now, but she worries the arrangement is stopping the 28-year-old from getting on with her life. "My granddaughter wants to go and have a baby with her partner, and live together and stuff like that," she said. "She's doing what she's doing for my sake." Ms Poole is one of 69,000 people in NSW and 85,000 nationally who are on a waiting list for social housing. She has been waiting for 11 years. It has been nearly 18 months since her doctor wrote a letter urging that she be placed on a priority list due to her complex medical needs, including a chronic heart condition and diabetes. At the same time, she updated her application with her granddaughter's notice that she needed to move out and could no longer co-rent. A delay in the request being processed meant they have been forced to renew their lease, but will not have the option to do so again. Ms Poole said no one from Mission Australia, which case manages her application, had contacted her about her change in circumstance and that when she called, she was told they would be able to do something when her lease ran out "because I would be homeless then". When contemplating the prospect of becoming homeless in her 70s, she became distressed. "I'm getting sad, which is really difficult. Homelessness would be absolutely horrible. "I think when you speak to someone and they're not actually seeing your exact circumstances, of course it's hard for them to exactly realise." Mission Australia declined an interview request and said they could not comment on Ms Poole's case for privacy reasons. In a statement, a spokesperson acknowledged there was "a growing need for more social and affordable housing" with wait times of up to 10 years. “Mission Australia is committed to working with the NSW government, developers and other non-profits to expand the number of social and affordable homes and meet the need in the community," the statement said. Ms Poole, who has been waiting 11 years, said after the ABC followed up on her case, she received a call from Mission Australia to say her request would be assessed by the end of the week. She said the ordeal had been a "huge strain". "I'm at the point where I just really need it. There's no other avenues for me to go." Growing problem Homelessness Australia chief executive Kate Colvin said Ms Poole was part of a growing group of people on the brink of sleeping rough. "They might have to double up with another family, stay with friends or family members and that can be really hard going because they might all be sort of squashed into the living room and that can create relationship pressures," she said. Ms Poole said she received a combined $645 a week from her pension and rent assistance, but the median cost of a one-bedroom unit where she lives at Urunga on the Coffs Coast is $400. She said after paying rent, she would be unable to afford food and medical bills. "Each payday that's all you're using all your money to, because I don't smoke and or drink or anything like that or gamble or go out," she said. "I need to be really careful with my diet because my diabetes is uncontrolled diabetes, but the things you do need to have are quite expensive. "I don't see all the specialists that I need to see because I just can't afford to." Homes NSW is the state agency tasked with delivering social and affordable housing. Speaking about the waitlist generally, chief executive Rebecca Pinkstone said "we just don't have enough homes for people who need them". "To be assessed for priority needs, you have to have an urgent need for housing and a priority need for housing means there's additional complexities around your needs," she said. "You're homeless, you have a disability, you might be an older or elderly person who's facing homelessness and that means that you get a higher priority on the waiting list." Less social housing available Ms Poole once lived in social housing in Sydney, but had to give it up when she moved to the Coffs Coast more than a decade ago to care for her aging parents. Both they and her ex-husband have since died. She said she understood the situation was dire across the board, and getting worse. "I watch parliament on the ABC, so I see what they say and even when they read out the stories about the different people with social housing and not with homes and things. "It's really hard to believe that it's got to this ... and it makes you wonder because it was so much easier years ago to get social housing." It is a hunch backed up by statistics. According to data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, an independent federal agency, there has been a "steady decline" in the number of social housing households as a proportion of Australian households, dropping from 4.8 per cent in 2011 to 4.1 per cent in 2024. The average across OECD countries is 7 per cent, or 8 per cent in the European Union. Ms Colvin said while governments are building homes, there was an urgent need to address "decades of underinvestment in social housing". "We have had the federal government invest in 55,000 social and affordable housing units, and that has meant that we're going to have a sort of stable proportion of social housing for a while, but it's not keeping up with population growth." Looking further back at state-based data, since 2008, there has been a marked increase in the Northern Territory and a much smaller increase in Tasmania, but all other states and territories have seen a decline over time. The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council recently recommended the federal government aim for social housing to reach 6 per cent as a medium-term goal, something not seen in Australia since the 1990s, and 10 per cent in the long term. "Building social housing is the single most important thing the government can do to address homelessness," Ms Colvin said. "The reality is that people can't find homes they can afford and delivering social housing is an immediate fix to that problem." In NSW, the state government has a $6.6 billion program to build social and affordable homes, including 60 homes in Coffs Harbour that could start to come online from 2029. Rebecca Pinkstone from Homes NSW said the decline in stock has been the result of both not maintaining existing housing to a high enough standard and a shortfall in new homes. "The fundamental issue for us has been, particularly post-COVID, the cost of construction has rapidly increased," she said. "And it means that for some areas, in some markets, it's really difficult to deliver that housing to cover the costs of even just building it." She welcomed state and federal investment to build more homes, but acknowledged it "won't meet every single person's needs". "What we need to see, aside from the homes that we're building at Homes New South Wales, is an increase in supply more generally in the private rental market." Federal Minister for Homelessness Clare O'Neil was contacted for comment.