Construction employs one in ten Australians, with a broad range of skills, using mostly locally made materials. Building social housing would meet urgent social needs as well as creating jobs.
A home, a springboard, or a safety net? New research finds a surprisingly large number of Australians have lived in social housing since 2000, using it in several very different ways.
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 government-backed body set up to help finance social housing providers is providing longer-term, cheaper loans. What’s still missing in Australia is direct public investment in new housing.
The public inquiry into Grenfell makes its first report – but those responsible for the circumstances leading up to the fire are yet to face the consequences.
After paying rent, more than half of low-income tenants don’t have enough left over for other essentials. And the latest evidence shows nearly half of them are stuck in this situation for years.
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.
A coordinated mix of policies does more to keep housing affordable for a significant proportion of a city’s residents than the unbalanced approach we see in Sydney.
The cost of land and, in turn, housing forces people to buy into the rules of market capitalism, making it very hard to ‘downshift’ from consumer lifestyles. But what if we rethink public housing?
The need to manage long waiting lists for social housing, rather than serving the best interests of tenants and prospective tenants, is a major driver of policymakers’ approach.
Having quality housing matters. What’s standing in the way of ensuring every Australian has housing that meets basic comfort and health standards? And how can we overcome these problems?
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.
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 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.
Working-class residents of Waterloo have a history of resisting threats to their community. Many tenants see the redevelopment of public housing as state-led gentrification to squeeze them out.
A tenfold increase in building is needed to overcome the current social housing shortfall and cover projected growth in need. But it can be done, and direct public investment is the cheapest way.
Shared equity models have a dual benefit of making home ownership affordable for people on modest incomes and freeing up scarce social housing for other households in need.
As Melbourne’s population hits 5 million, it’s a reminder that growing cities must make much better use of vacant and underused land to meet the urgent need for affordable housing.
PhD Candidate, School of Social Sciences, University of Tasmania, and Senior Research Consultant, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney