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Articles on Community housing

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Image: David Kelly

Yes, the 1.5 million Australians getting rent assistance need an increase, but more public housing is the lasting fix for the crisis

Rent assistance can ease rental stress, but it won’t help low-income earners find secure and affordable housing when it’s in such short supply, nor stop disadvantage being concentrated in some areas.
Mick Tsikas/AAP

The market has failed to give Australians affordable housing, so don’t expect it to solve the crisis

While the Productivity Commission’s critique of the national housing agreement is justified, its faith in the market is not. The Albanese government is right to invest in building social housing.
Morrison government assistant minister Luke Howarth argues that finding jobs for people in social housing will help free up dwellings for other people on the waiting list. Mick Tsikas/AAP

As simple as finding a job? Getting people out of social housing is much more complex than that

Helping tenants find work supposedly creates a pathway into private rental housing, freeing up social housing for others. Private rental costs and the situations of many tenants make that unrealistic.
The evidence shows permanent housing, like the Fitzroy housing estate, is the best and most cost-effective way to reduce homelessness. Kate Shaw

Shh! Don’t mention the public housing shortage. But no serious action on homelessness can ignore it

It’s time to tackle the shortage of public housing head-on, rather than skirt around the problem. Public housing is the single most cost-effective way to turn around the rise in homelessness.
Policies focused on ownership do little to help lower-income households that are struggling to pay the rent. Iakov Filimonov/Shutterstock

Housing affordability has improved slightly, but people on lower incomes will continue to struggle

The policy focus remains on home ownership, but a new survey shows slight improvements in affordability do little to help people on low incomes. Their plight calls for better social housing policy.
The extra $1 billion Premier Gladys Berejiklian (left) and Social Housing Minister Pru Goward say will be ‘harnessed’ for social housing is actually Commonwealth Rent Assistance for which tenants transferred to community housing providers become eligible. Simon Bullard/AAP

‘Growth’ of community housing may be an illusion. The cost-shifting isn’t

For the first time a state government housing agency has effectively contracted out all its operations in some regions, but will this improve and add to the total social housing stock?
Labor leader Bill Shorten has announced a policy based on a solid principle of fairness, but with a second-best model of delivering social housing. Julian Smith/AAP

Labor’s housing pledge is welcome, but direct investment in social housing would improve it

Labor has made a substantial commitment to tackling inequality in Australia, but has taken a second-best approach to overcoming the huge shortfall of social housing.
Caggara House in Brisbane caters for low-income residents aged 55 and over who previously lived alone in state-owned houses that were too big for their needs. UDIA Qld/Facebook

A community fix for the affordable housing crisis

Much of the innovation in providing social housing is coming from community housing providers around the country. And it’s desperately needed given the state of housing inequality in Australia.
A homeless man sleeps on a tram shelter bench on Batman Avenue, Melbourne, 1990s. William Bowers/Museums Victoria

Melbourne’s ‘doughnut city’ housed its homeless

When the city centre was revitalised in the 1990s, homeless people were pushed out. With homelessness rising today, it’s important to recognise the links between urban development and displacement.
Exordium Apartments at Zetland, built by City West Housing, provide affordable, high-quality housing to key workers within the City of Sydney. Alan Morris

Mission nearly impossible: the City of Sydney’s efforts to increase the affordable housing supply

If local government is to deliver affordable housing, state and federal governments must assist. Even councils as powerful and well resourced as the City of Sydney cannot do it by themselves.
The argument that stronger supply will deliver more affordable housing isn’t borne out in areas where new unit and apartment construction is booming. Joel Carrett/AAP

Affordable housing policy failure still being fuelled by flawed analysis

The clichés about housing supply and regulatory restraints are distractions from the need to focus on expanding the affordable housing sector to directly meet the needs of low-income households.
At the Ashwood-Chadstone estate, Port Phillip Housing Association has built high-quality homes, with no visible difference between the 72 private and 206 community housing dwellings. PPHA

Community sector offers a solid platform for fair social housing

Concerns about the privatisation of public housing estates should not blind us to the benefits of the transfer of public housing to the not-for-profit community housing sector.

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