The problem with most public housing 'renewal' programs is that the residents have the least say in what happens to the places they call home. The evidence of housing research is also being ignored.
Exordium Apartments at Zetland, built by City West Housing, provide affordable, high-quality housing to key workers within the City of Sydney.
Alan Morris
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
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.
New affordable housing development in Melbourne.
Ryan van den Nouwelant
Based on research comparing projects across the country, a new assessment tool calculates cost-effective ways to fund affordable housing to meet specified needs in different markets.
Prime inner-city land, such as the Flemington estate, is being sold to developers to build new housing, but the public lacks basic details about these deals.
Artist's impression, Victorian government
The Victorian government isn't alone in seeking private partners to renew public housing. What is notable is its lack of transparency by comparison with such arrangements elsewhere.
Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar has confirmed investments in affordable housing will be backed by a government guarantee.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
The Australian government has at last taken the lead in affordable housing policy with a package of measures that should attract institutional investors hungry for low-risk returns.
A real estate sold sign hangs in front of a west-end Toronto property. Canada’s newly announced housing strategy contains scant measures to help first-time buyers in pricey markets.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graeme Roy
Canada's National Housing Strategy leaves a large segment of the population that must find a way to afford housing in the private market. More initiatives are needed to help first-time home buyers.
A German bomber flying over Wapping, September 7, 1940.
Wikimedia Commons
Yet again the evidence shows supply is no cure-all for affordable housing. All levels of government in Australia need to concentrate on housing for low-income renters in particular.
Maya Demetriou, 90, pictured after the court ruling that the minister did not properly consider a heritage listing recommendation, will be the last tenant left in the Sirius building.
Perry Duffin/AAP
All but a handful of the former public housing tenants are gone. But despite the government again rejecting the recommended heritage listing of the Sirius building, the fight to save it isn't over.
The Living Space development in Cockburn, Western Australia, has won praise as an innovative mixed-use social housing project.
Courtesy of HHA Projects
Simply having warmer homes can help prevent avoidable deaths this winter.
Housing policymaking hasn’t gone smoothly since Tony Abbott sidelined the experts by scrapping the National Housing Supply Council in 2013.
Alan Porritt/AAP
Unaffordable housing and homelessness are burning issues. Policymaking has suffered from a critical lack of data and expert input since the National Housing Supply Council was axed in 2013.
#WeLiveHere2017 aims to turn inanimate buildings into metaphorical sentient structures, with ‘mood lights’ expressing the feelings of Matavai and Turanga Tower residents about their neighbourhood’s redevelopment.
Nic Walker courtesy of #WeLiveHere2017
Residents of two high-rise public housing blocks are being given 'mood lights' to express how they feel based on their experience of the process of redeveloping their neighbourhood.
Forty years on, there is still resistance to mixing with the ‘sort of people’ who were segregated in social housing tower blocks.
David Jackmanson/flickr
Even where communities are mixed, many inner-city families go to extraordinary financial and geographic lengths to ensure their children do not go to school with children from 'the flats'.
Around one in seven Australia households either cannot get into housing at market rates or are struggling to pay the rent.
shutterstock
One in seven Australian households is in a state of housing need. A shortfall in social housing supply means some are locked out of the market and others pay much more for rent than they can afford.
The Sirius building and the Heritage Act are both products of a significant part of Sydney’s history: the Green Bans movement.
Dean Lewins/AAP
Social housing can certainly have heritage significance. Over more than 100 years, it has been shaped by contemporary architectural and political ideas, sometimes in an exemplary way.
Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle explains the revised Queen Victoria Market redevelopment, flanked by Planning Minister Richard Wynne and Premier Daniel Andrews.
Joe Castro/AAP
Mixing public and private housing in urban renewal projects can be a contentious business. But public good and optimal use of public resources, not developer interests, should guide such decisions.