Finally, a place to call home
It was a housewarming party with a difference, but after three long years, local not-for-profit youth service, Veritas House, unveiled their newly renovated two-bedroom flat, a future home for many young people in need.
“It's been a big project,” Acting CEO of Veritas House, Narelle Stocks, said of the new transition property.
It was in December 2018 that Veritas House first launched its fundraising appeal with the goal of purchasing a property in Orange to combat the desperate shortage of affordable properties for vulnerable young people.
Three years on — through bushfires, flooding and a global pandemic — Veritas House were able to purchase a unit in August 2022, thanks to $280,000 in generous donations from individuals and local businesses.
On Monday, following four months of renovations, Veritas House employees and board members celebrated as they showed supporters and the media their newly renovated flat, which will be used to help young people escaping homelessness get the life skills and all-important rental reference in order to find more permanent accommodation.
“So they'll be here for six to nine months, depending on their individual circumstances — We've got two young people ready to transition in as soon as the official proceedings finish,” Narelle said on Monday.
“So they've been in temporary accommodation and been working with the team for some time to get their Centrelink in place and to support them to be ready to live independently.
“I think it's a little surreal for them at the moment, to be honest, " Narelle continued.
“It's been a challenging time for them both and so I think just how beautiful the property is, will exceed their expectations and there'll be a little bit of shock that it's truly their place that they can call home.”
The past four months have seen quite an overhaul to the apartment, with energy efficient installed, lighting and electrical upgrades, new heating, repainting and new furnishings.
“The rental market is incredibly hard and expensive and it's just, you know, impossible to get affordable housing so to be able to offer something that is just so lovely is exciting,” Narelle said.
That they have been able to undertake such extensive work is due to the support of the Newcastle Permanent Charitable Foundation, which contributed $60,000 to the renovation.
“We are unbelievably so proud to be able to walk through the property today and see the incredible hard work that they have put into this,” said Newcastle Permanent Charitable Foundation executive officer, Carly Bush on Monday.
One of our key focus areas of the Charitable Foundation is young people. And so to be able to partner with Veritas House and see the work that they do in supporting young people — and obviously, with the housing crisis at the moment — it was an absolute no-brainer for us to be able to support them.”
With an average of 50 young people accessing crisis accommodation at the Veritas House youth refuge in Orange each year, and no end in sight to the current rental crisis, there is still the need to do more,” Narelle said.
“Our supported independent living program, in the last 12 months, applied for 69 properties on behalf of young people and managed to get five of these,” Narelle said.
And that's just one of our services. There are six that each deliver programs like that across our agency, so the need is incredibly great.
“While this will be incredible for two young people in the next couple of weeks, we still have a waiting list on our books of young people who can't get similar properties. So we'll keep fundraising and we'll keep advocating for young people to government, that something needs to be done to address the shortfall of social and affordable housing across the region.”