A Chigwell community house that helps nearly 900 people a week says it could be $150,000 worse off next financial year if two state government funding streams are not renewed.
Bucaan Community House chief executive Mary-Anne Evans said the house expects to lose a $50,000 annual funding boost and its ‘Community Connector’ program funding.
“The only place we can find those cuts are in staffing, which means we can’t open as much as we do now,” she said.
Evans said state funding covered two full-time-equivalent positions shared across four staff.
Without an increase, she said, staffing could fall to one person.
The house cannot open without two paid staff on site for workplace health and safety reasons.
She said demand had grown from about 60 people a week in 2013 to nearly 900 and the house ran at a $100,000 loss in 2024-25.
Evans said about 40 people a week used the ‘Community Connector’ program at the house, but nothing had been set aside for it in the forward estimates.
Labor leader Josh Willie said neighbourhood houses “cannot withstand any funding cuts”.
Labor also raised concerns about a needs analysis of neighbourhood house funding, which has been awarded to KPMG for $171,500.
When the review was announced in November 2025, the government allocated $150,000 for it.
“I don’t want to see Eric Abetz taking an axe to neighbourhood house funding to pay for Liberal waste,” he said.
Education Minister Jo Palmer said there had been no cuts to neighbourhood house funding.
“No, there absolutely hasn’t been any cuts at all,” she said.
Palmer said the government had invested more than $100 million in neighbourhood houses over five years.
She said an extra $2.3 million was brought forward in the last budget because of cost-of-living pressures.
Budget releases show that money was for the ‘Community Connector’ program, bringing this year’s funding for it to $4.4 million.
