Fix social housing policy travesty
A key new Victorian government social housing policy is so fundamentally flawed it should either be restructured or abandoned.
The government is selling nine prime publicly owned sites to private developers, under opaque financial arrangements, on the condition that housing developments contain at least 10 per cent more public housing residences than are demolished. The move follows three unconvincing trials; developers made huge profits. Segregation occurred to the point of gated gardens prohibited to the social housing residents.
The scheme fails to meet tenets of public policy. It lacks transparency. Although the government calls for tenders, details are concealed from the public, preventing independent cost/benefit analysis of the process and the outcome.
It is a false economy. The government gets to spends less in the short-term (which should not be a pressing priority, given the relative robustness of the economy and budget), but is diminishing long-term public wealth by selling off increasingly valuable public land. Further, the requirement of an increase in the number of social housing residences of only 10 per cent seems unduly low. The new scheme, though, leaves open the unintended consequence of actually reducing the number of public housing places by replacing family dwellings with far smaller apartments.
The new scheme makes even less economic sense considering the government could finance what should really be happening – the repair, renovation and/or redevelopment of the social housing estates – at historically low interest rates and not needlessly and without accountability disposing, during their temporary power, of permanent public assets.
Any profit from the remaining, private homes – which will account for about two-thirds of the total dwellings – will primarily go to the developers, although there is provision for a chunk of any exceptional profits to be passed to the government, which will also be maintaining its overall policy of adding to public housing by replacing and upgrading estates built from the 1940s on. The need is pressing; winter is upon us and homelessness is widespread. The conventional understanding is that Victoria’s public housing waiting list is 35,000 – but that is the number of applications, not people. There are nearly 58,000 adults and 25,000 children in need of secure housing in our state. Far from all of them are sleeping rough, but practically all of them are technically homeless and in need of some support. About 1700 more social housing homes are needed each year over the next 20 years to maintain social housing at its current 3.5 per cent share of the total homes in Victoria.
Other states and nations have created public-private projects that are accountable, share the financial benefits and significantly increase social housing. The Andrews government can readily fix the errors.
We should never forget that most of us is but a few bad decisions or some mongrel misfortune away from crisis or catastrophe. Proper public housing is a crucial response to that universal truth.