CEO’s message

CEO MESSAGE LYALL GORMAN

I am pleased to present to you our FY 2019–2020 Annual Report. While this year has been an impactful and challenging one for all of us, it bears a special significance to me as the end of June marked my first full financial year as CEO of Evolve Housing.

When I came on board in May 2019, I was fortunate enough to be taking over an organisation that was already financially strong, equipped with robust business practices and resources, and staffed by a team who are hard work that was completed by our wonderful team a team to support clients and each other.

passionate and dedicated to their mission.

Reflecting on the past 12 months, I can confidently say that working collectively, our Evolve Housing team has improved on this solid foundation even further and continued to achieve outstanding results across our Evolve family and broader.

We have successfully completed a new affordable showed that 86% of tenants were satisfied with our

housing project in Newcastle, and increased our affordable and disability housing portfolios.

In the span of six weeks, we refurbished 142 social housing units in Arncliffe to be used as emergency accommodation, and are now managing these tenancies. Through our Opportunity Pathways program, we have worked with 219 participants in the past year, helping them as they pursue their employment goals. We restructured our Resident Advisory Group to be more effective and representative. We facilitated an independent review of our Work Health and Safety management system and also embarked upon a digital information transformation project.

We laid the foundations for our future growth by building for the next three years to pursue and deliver attainable and clear outcomes and targets. This plan will keep us on track to achieve our goals despite the tumultuous COVID driven external environment we are currently working in.

These achievements are just a small fraction of the in the 2019–2020 financial year, despite the difficulties that COVID-19 posed. The risk management policies that we had in place, along with a strong and tight-knit company culture, meant that even while physically separated, we were still able to work effectively as

The success of our service capacity is reflected in the annual Resident Satisfaction Survey results, which our Strategic Plan 2020–2023, which directs our actions

service. We also generated an annual total surplus of over $4M with a view to re-investing this back into community housing and expanding the range of support programs on offer to our residents.

As we enter a new year, uncertainty abounds, but the one thing I am sure of is that our housing and social support services will only become more in demand. I am confident that our team will be able to rise to

the challenge and improve our services even more in 2020–2021 and I greatly look forward to sharing that journey with you.

Lyall Gorman, CEO, Evolve Housing