All kids deserve a home.
Stable public housing is vital for many vulnerable children to grow up safely with their families.
Yet each year, the Western Australian government evicts hundreds of children to homelessness when their family’s public housing tenancy is terminated, without needing to provide a reason.
The WA Department of Communities is responsible for both child protection and public housing and it is unacceptable that we still see children evicted to homelessness from public housing.
The impacts are profound and developmental: childhood eviction and homelessness is predictive of increased involvement with the youth justice, child protection and health systems, increased adult incarceration, barriers to education, increased health and mental health issues, and increased incidence of premature illness, self-harm and death.
Over half of all evictions from public housing in WA are Aboriginal households, and the impacts on these Aboriginal children evicted to homelessness by their own government are acute and chronic.
In 2022 the Abraham family, represented by SCALES Community Legal Centre, started a class action complaint in the Australian Human Rights Commission alleging race discrimination in public housing evictions. A Federal Court Injunction prevents the Housing Authority from evicting the family while the Human Rights Commission investigates.
But families shouldn’t have to sue their own government, and we don’t need to wait for the Courts, we can build a good solution now.
WA government figures show that 58% of all WA public housing fixed term tenancies are imposed on Aboriginal families, meaning that hundreds of other affected families may join this racial discrimination case. Other families have been hit with extensive maintenance bills for damage they didn't create, which is often used to unfairly ban them from accessing housing - Aboriginal families are again affected disproportionately.
Stop Evicting Families is a community campaign that has come together to call for major change, and demonstrate that there are realistic, affordable solutions which will benefit all of us.