SHELTER WA’s analysis showed the Perth’s East Metropolitan area including City of Swan and Kalamunda needed hundreds of new social and affordable homes annually to meet 2041 targets.

The data showed City of Swan needed 288 social and affordable homes added annually, while the City of Kalamunda, Bassendean, and the Central Wheatbelt needed 119, 94, and 56 respectively.

Shelter WA’s analysis was based on UNSW Unmet Housing Need data capturing current need from 2021 until 2041.

The state government announcement on Sunday a federal and state partnership welcoming projects aiming to deliver almost 1800 new social and affordable homes for the state.

They announced the first tranche of projects planned for construction to begin next year with Ellenbrook, Brabham, Woodbridge to benefit.

Midland, Ballajura and Bassendean have been listed as suburbs to benefit from the further seven affordable housing development projects planned.

Indigo Junction chief executive officer Sharon Gough said the announcement was welcome news and was partly brought about by advocacy in the sector by Shelter WA and organisations like her own.

“We do know that Midland has got the highest number of rough sleepers in any local government area in Western Australia,” she said.

“Certainly, the demand for adult and couple accommodation within this region is high, and obviously housing stock is low.

“(But) we are coming to the end of a refurbishment project that we were funded through state government to deliver in 2020.

“So, what we’ve been able to do is work across a number of our community housing properties to expand their size.

“We’ve been able to expand properties to accommodate larger families, and we’ve had some great success with families being able to move into those refurbished new properties.

“So, we’ve had some really happy families move into those locations.”

Shelter WA said despite the addition of more than 2500 social homes since 2021-22, they estimate at least 2000 affordable homes have been lost in the same timeframe as they exit the National Rental Affordability Scheme.

Shelter WA chief executive Kath Snell said the housing crisis in WA was at a breaking point and the status quo wasn’t keeping pace with the crisis.

“With more than 20,000 households on the social housing waitlist, plus more and more people priced out of the private rental market, this is leaving every electorate desperately short of supply to meet demand,” she said.

“No matter where you’re living and voting, we need hundreds of additional social and affordable homes in every state electorate.

“We’re calling on all parties to commit to a social and affordable housing target of at least 5000 homes every year.

“It must be underpinned by substantial investment that matches the reality of need in our neighbourhoods.”

Ms Gough said it was worth remembering that within the stories of hardship, there was also the kernel of hope and positivity with each family homed.

“The idea of the project was to give those properties another 30 years in terms of their life cycle, and they’ve had significant refurbishment to bring them up to new life appearance, and they’re able to accommodate families with extended family like grandparents and children,” she said.

“We had one client in particular that move had actually just changed her life and the lives of her kids, and that they were able to even get stable and get back on track, get back to school, and create some stability in their day-to-day.”