The Adelaide Benevolent Society was established in 1849, with a mission to provide assistance to those in need.

It was first founded as the Adelaide Benevolent and Strangers’ Friend Society, and 20 years after being created it started housing South Australians.

The charity purchased its first cottages in 1969, which it would rent out to those without homes. It’s continued this tradition and has since grown its property portfolio to around 250 houses.

More than 50,000 vulnerable people have been assisted by the Society through housing and grants since it was founded, and it still runs out of the building it started in 175 years ago – Elder Hall on Morialta Street in the CBD.

Adelaide Benevolent Society’s HQ Elder Hall is tucked away in the centre of the CBD. Photo: Tony Lewis.

InDaily spoke to chair Tim Ryan, who said continued growth including the expansion of its housing portfolio was key to the Society’s impact strategy moving forward.

Ryan reflected on how far the charity had come since 1849, noting that it was “pretty amazing” that new arrivals to Adelaide – a very young colony when the Society was founded – would set up the organisation.

“They were a group of South Australians who had probably come to this new colony and were doing alright, but there were some people not doing as well as they were, and they had a genuine sense of responsibility to help people who were in need,” Ryan said.

A scan of the Adelaide Benevolent Society’s first meeting minutes from 1849.

“It was literally the Strangers’ Friends – it wasn’t a church group or a denomination looking after members of a flock – it was literally to help people who were strangers.

“I think really in many ways we’ve stayed true to that history ever since, although we have changed. But the original model was a subscription model – people would contribute weekly or monthly to help out people who were poor.”

Ryan said the organisation would assist whoever: recent migrants, widows, or wives who were abandoned by husbands who went to the goldfields in Victoria to chase a fortune but never returned.

“There was no social security, it really was set up by concerned citizens to help people in need,” he said.

“Eventually, around the 1860s, increasingly people were asking for assistance to pay for their rent. And here we are now in the middle of a housing crisis, but that was exactly the same story in the 1860s.

“There was a significant donation that helped the Society purchase its first houses to assist people by providing affordable rentals. That was a watershed moment because they had seen how important stable housing was to people’s welfare.”

Ryan said the Society had been helping struggling renters for the best part of 175 years, meaning the organisation knows how difficult it can be to deliver new housing stock – something the state government is working on.

“We do think that stability is so critical for everything else. Having not just a house but a home is vital to people’s wellbeing and sets them up for all sorts of other success,” he said.

“Fundamentally, being able to secure employment is hard if you’re worried about where you’re going to sleep at night.”

These days, the charity assists those in housing stress by providing accommodation with cheap rent. The Society is not a community housing provider or part of the Housing Trust: “We’re essentially a generous landlord” said Ryan.

“We charge on average 75 per cent of the market rate of rent,” he said.

“The houses aren’t elaborate – we offer good but essentially basic housing. But it is affordable and it is stable.

“Some have gone on to buy their own houses. Some have got themselves a job and a career, or they’re studying. Others will be with us for the long term, and we’ve certainly had a number of tenants with us for a very long time.”

One of the Adelaide Benevolent Society’s houses at Salisbury Downs. Photo: Supplied.

Ryan said this approach to making rentals more affordable meant it could help those that would otherwise slip through the cracks of government bureaucracy around social housing.

“Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of people just struggling to pay rent. We are an option to some of those and not surprisingly there’s not too many vacancies,” he said.

“Over time, we make a lot of surplus and we reinvest that to try and maintain the existing stock of housing which is very expensive, but also to buy and build more.

“We’re working on a project to build five more houses, and we’ll continue to do that.”

Asked whether the Society had plans to significantly ramp up the scale of its housing portfolio in the near-term, Ryan said the Society was doing some strategic planning to develop a roadmap.

“We’ve got an appetite to continue to substantially grow our stock of houses,” he said.

“We operate the organisation like a sensible business. We borrow to buy more housing, to invest in housing, and we borrow modestly because we don’t want costs to go through the roof.

“We really are looking to supplement the work governments do. We would like to support them. It’s a complicated solution – we’re not going to have a quick fix – and we need to work together to make sure we can provide the most optimal help we can.”