By Martin Mulligan
Deputy prime minister Brian Howe, titular leader of the federal parliamentary "left", hasn't fared very well with a number of pet projects in recent times. Medicare co-payment and Better Cities appear to have attracted little more than token support from his cabinet colleagues, but Howe is convinced he is on a winner with the concept of "social housing" to replace "outdated" public housing.
The term social housing has been floating around in Canberra for some time, but gained new legitimacy with some heavy promotion in the federal government's National Housing Strategy (NHS), launched with fanfare in mid-1990. It is an ill-defined term. Some NHS documents refer to both social housing and public housing and suggest that the former is a broader category which includes public housing. Others claim social housing fits "between the extremes of private and public tenure".
Perhaps the most telling reference to the social housing is in an issues paper titled "The affordability of Australian housing", which makes much of "innovative approaches to the provision of social rental housing". The crux of the matter is that social housing is attractive to government because it offers the prospect of private investment in housing stock through the establishment of what are called "equity bonds". It is an attempt to shift responsibility for housing funds "off-budget" — a form of privatisation.
Promoters of social housing claim it is an improvement on existing public housing schemes because it can provide more diverse housing options, ranging from rental cooperatives to buy-your-own schemes. They also say it is more capable of tapping into rich veins such as superannuation funds, thus providing housing that government cannot deliver "on budget". They cite various cooperative schemes in Denmark and the Netherlands.
There are some obvious problems with all this:
- There are no guarantees that private investment will actually flow into such schemes, or that it won't desert the field when times are tough.
- There are potential conflicts with management and maintenance. What will be the balance between investors, government and tenants?
- The European models seem to have done little or nothing to make housing more accessible/affordable for low-income sectors.
Some promoters of social housing deliberately use the term vaguely, and it provides a convenient smokescreen behind which government can reduce its public housing responsibilities. In Victoria alone there are more than 40,000 on the public housing waiting list, yet the Kirner government — like every other government in Australia — is trying to find ways to cash in on the investment of earlier governments by selling off stock (wherever it is good enough to sell). ming "One Nation" package conspicuously avoided any investment in housing, despite obvious flow-on effects for employment.
Economic "rationalism" may have lost some of its gloss with the onset of recession, but it remains the dominant ideology of most politicians and leading bureaucrats, and the fashion is for government to get out of housing. This is the context in which the National Housing Strategy was drafted, with its emphasis on the great Australian dream/nightmare of home ownership.
Some "innovative concepts" lumped under the banner of social housing include rental cooperatives and shared ownership. Such schemes have limited appeal. While you mightn't need much money to get into them, you probably do need a certain level of education and/or self-confidence to find out what they mean in practice.
There are mixed responses to social housing among community-based organisations. The Victorian Council for Social Services welcomes the idea as providing a framework for a broader range of housing options. Some organisations argue that government funding of housing will inevitably decline, and social housing is the most viable alternative.
Other groups, such as the Public Tenants' Union, Shelter Victoria and the Inner Urban Regional Housing Council, want more vigorous support for public housing. People for Public Housing has recently been reformed in Melbourne to try to win back some lost ground.
Obviously, existing public housing schemes leave a lot to be desired (though newer stock is usually built to more acceptable standards). There is certainly a need for greater diversity in housing type and in management arrangements, and public housing institutions need to dump some old concepts such as "welfare housing". But the homeless figures prove that there are huge deficiencies in both home ownership and private rental forms of tenure, and public housing is the only alternative that can make housing affordable and accessible.