6
Client and stakeholder
perspectives on service impact
investment. This contains the success of the model
and the ongoing appeal for its expansion. While
the longer-term effectiveness of sustaining
tenancies from the model still needs to be
monitored, being able to house clients relatively
quickly given the restricted options available
within the social housing sector is a promising
outcome.
The program has been effective in:
Overcoming the reasons for seeking
support and assisting clients ‘into the
door’ of a private rental property.
Stabilising housing, particularly when
higher needs clients have continued to
be linked into other sources of ongoing
support.
Scheduling repayments so that
borrowers can manage the loan
repayments.
Helping clients to rebuild new lives and
cope better with financial and day to day
stresses.
It is a small program and it is good that
it started out that way to trial whether
it would work and be able to modify
the practices without significant risks
or large investment of funds. It has
used a relatively small amount of funds
but does have a longer term ripple
effect to the individuals, families and
communities in preventing
homelessness and can continue on
after the initial grant. The numbers do
need to grow to be able to help more
people. The program should continue
to keep going as it is filling an
important need – helping people raise
the bond and get in the door [External
stakeholder].
The program has been less effective in:
Being able to overcome the longer-term
structural and systemic difficulties of
affordability of private rental for those
remaining on income support payments.
The core aim of the program is to assist clients into
the private rental market who would otherwise be
excluded from access because of financial and
other reasons and therefore would be at high risk
of experiencing homelessness. Staff, stakeholders
and clients interviewed were asked to comment on
the aspects of the program they felt were most
effective and least effective in meeting this core
aim. The general perception amongst those
consulted was that brokerage loans for private
rental access do increase the desirability of the
tenant to a prospective agent and landlord.
6.1
Overcoming the reasons for
seeking assistance
In assessing whether the program was effective in
overcoming the reasons for seeking assistance
clients were asked to respond to a series of
statements and then provide open ended
responses to elaborate on the reasons for their
rating. Three statements relating to the adequacy
of the loan and whether they had any difficulties
meeting their repayment schedule appear in table
4. Each indicator was measured on a scale of 0 to
10 where 0 equals strongly disagree and 10 equals
strongly agree. The table shows the median
satisfaction scores for each statement. As shown,
the respons