Since the Robert Menzies Liberal government first began undermining the once great public housing scheme, state and federal governments have continued to favour sell-offs to developers over making safe, affordable housing a basic human right.
Despite the worsening homelessness crisis, governments are proceeding to sell off public and social housing as no-fault evictions, short-stay accommodation profiteering continues.
New South Wales government data shows as at April 30 there were 65,758 households waiting for social housing: 11,161 were waiting for priority housing.
Anglicare’s March Rental Affordability Snapshot shows private rentals are now completely unaffordable for those on minimum wages or pension incomes. The result is an unprecedented power imbalance between landlords and tenants, which is driving a serious crisis.
It is a particularly perilous matrix when your landlord is also your government.
According to the January Productivity Commission report into government services, the term “public housing” now includes state-owned and managed- public housing, social housing, Indigenous housing, community housing and Indigenous community housing. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s Australian Assistance in Housing 2024 report equates that to 824,000 people living in 446,000 dwellings.
Yet, despite record funding in the 2024-2025 NSW budget, Labor is yet to rise to the enormity of the task, amid labour shortages and public sector reform failures.
Maintenance backlog
Homes NSW said in June last year said it had received 24,592 urgent maintenance requests for that financial year and conceded it was not keeping up. “We know current response times on maintenance requests have deteriorated” it said in what can only be described as an understatement.
In response Labor promised a simpler process for logging and tracking repairs, saying request management would go back to being managed in-house, however contractors would still used to complete the work.
Tenants say the breakdown in communication between contractors and the department is the primary problem and going through the “correct channels” to try and negotiate solutions has become pointless, with frustrations reaching boiling point.
Slater and Gordon, representing thousands of tenants living in substandard public housing in remote communities across Western Australia, has initiated a class action in the Federal Court of Australia.
A group of Canberra’s social housing tenants, who also want their day in the Federal Court, has had the way cleared for a class action against the ACT government over its plan to move them from their homes under its “Growth and Renewal” program.
Homes NSW may well be next, as desperate tenants increasingly seek external advocacy and legal redress, saying the departmental complaints resolution system is rigged against them. The tenants say Homes NSW has still not addressed chronic maintenance delays and modification failures, as liveable but empty government homes sit idle.
Amid major difficulties with departmental communications, NSW Minister for Housing Rose Jackson — famously clueless about how much it costs to rent in Sydney — is accused of refusing to engage directly with the community as contract maintenance and disabled modification systems continue to fail.
In posts to the NSW Housing Misconduct Reporting Facebook page frustrated tenants took aim. “Elected officials have a responsibility to accurately represent and serve the people in social housing” said one recent post.
“Engaging directly with the community would provide valuable insight. Maintenance has not improved`and residents continue to live in unacceptable conditions with significant safety concerns.”
Unsafe living conditions
Many of the problems the tenants raise have been well documented. Mould is an increasingly common problem as it has serious health ramifications.
Exposure to asbestos remains a significant issue as the ghost of James Hardie lingers and works schedules stall. Disabled tenants are being trapped in and out of units with gas leaks and malfunctioning lifts, creating catastrophic fire risk.
Tenants using walkers, or wheelchairs, are often unable to access or use kitchens or bathrooms in their homes due to the dysfunctional patchwork of schemes, approvals and delays which are part of the disabled modification scheme.
Should a tenant have National Disability Insurance Scheme funding or a worker’s compensation claim, the complexity of application only increases as departments play pass-the-parcel on costs and responsibility.
Some properties, for structural reasons, are unable to be appropriately modified. Given the government’s continued championing of the neoliberal model, it is unable to concede the hunger games rental market it created leaves those tenants nowhere else to go.
While the public housing management merry-go-round continues, residents’ physical and mental health is suffering as they mourn more members of their communities. New data shows a 63% surge in preventable deaths among people experiencing homelessness, with people dying decades earlier than the general population because of critical shortages in housing and support services.
Inappropriate housing and lack of support services is also making mental health worse for public tenants, with often tragic results.
A recent Mental Health Australia report, The Impact of Access to Housing On Our Mental Health said the government needs to do more to increase the availability of housing options, support sustained tenancies and improve early intervention and response services for the growing crisis in mental health.
One tenant, who wished to remain anonymous, told Green Left they had heard it all before. “The government budgets billions and has a big press conference but, for us, nothing ever changes,” he said. “And they treat us with such disrespect.”