The St Vincent de Paul Society is calling for more social housing as the latest figures show demand across the Hunter has grown by 28 per cent in a year.
The organisation's Maitland/Newcastle social justice representative Sister Carmel Hanson said housing insecurity and homelessness, along with other kinds of disadvantage, led to people who are experiencing long-term and acute poverty being excluded from broader society.
"Without a stable, affordable home, the difficulty of holding down a job, caring for a family, or even having enough food to eat regularly all increase significantly," she said.
"It has been a long-term position of the St Vincent de Paul Society NSW that more social housing needs to be built."
The Newcastle Herald reported earlier this month that the number of people registered on a social housing waiting list in Newcastle jumped from 1277 in 2021 to 1709 in 2022.
That figure increased from 668 to 816 in the same period at Maitland, and from 803 to 1120 in the Lake Macquarie area.
The St Vincent de Paul Society said on Monday research it commissioned showed that 5000 new social housing dwellings needed to be built annually in order to reduce the state's waiting list by 75 per cent.
"In the past year, more than half of the people seeking assistance from members of the society in the local area were experiencing housing stress," Sister Hanson said.
"High and unaffordable housing costs mean that people are having to forgo other basics, such as food, heating and cooling, or essential medicines.
"And given the lengthening social housing waiting list and ongoing housing crisis, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find affordable homes, meaning already vulnerable people are pushed into homelessness."
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