Amid the biggest housing crisis in Australia’s history, public housing is being destroyed by sell offs and outsourcing. This is leading to the shameful neglect of some of the most vulnerable people. Some public housing tenants now say they are more isolated.
When the Commonwealth Housing Commission was first established to address Australia’s post-war housing shortage in 1943, housing was considered a basic right. Its landmark 1944 report laid out a federal and state plan for public housing. “A dwelling of good standard and equipment is not only the need, but the right of every citizen ... no tenant or purchaser should be exploited for excessive profits,” it said.
The report also highlighted that “private enterprise … has not adequately and hygienically been housing the low-income group”, a reflection of the socio-economic damage inflicted by greedy landlords and governments’ lack of support for the poor.
The first Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement (CSHA) was purpose-built to address both concerns. Signed in 1945 by Ben Chifley’s Labor government, the agreement provided the framework and federal and state funding for the building and managing of public housing. Chifley also nationalised essential services including the banks.
Over the next 10 years, state housing authorities built almost 100,000 dwellings for public rental — one in every seven dwellings built. The New South Wales Housing Commission built almost 38,000 of those, 18% of all NSW housing built. Returned soldiers, large families and formerly disadvantaged people became tenants.
Coupled with a strong labour market (unemployment over 1955–56 was less than 2%) and proactive immigration policies, the public housing scheme created entire suburbs of affordable housing and economic opportunity for the working class. It was also an escape route from slums.
Towers 20–30 stories high were built in Gadigal Country/Sydney and Naarm/Melbourne and, later, in Western Australia. Priority was given to the most disadvantaged.
However, without community support, the towers became notorious for crime and suicides. It was a warning about single-demographic high density that, unfortunately, went unheeded.
At the time the wider economy was also booming; it was a time of low inflation, industrial advance, proportionate wages and free education. However, post-war conservatism and a rising middle class sought to use their newfound political influence to increase their personal market share and the public housing program became a victim of its own success.
Neoliberalism
The conservative Robert Menzies government in 1956 was the first to undermine the CSHA, wanting more home ownership and less rentals in the public scheme.
Long before negative gearing and first home-owners grants, Menzies pushed for low income earners to rent in the private market. He subsidised finance for home owners by redirecting 30% of public funds to building societies and state banks. It began the process of privatising public housing and public housing completion rates declined to about 9% of all dwellings.
The NSW Housing Commission had sold almost 100,000 dwellings by 1969 — one third of those it had built. It was the dawn of neoliberalism, where governments encouraged private sector investment and reduced their provision of affordable housing.
The Neville Wran Labor government set up the Land Commission of NSW, in November 1976, in response to residential land shortages and rapid price rises in cities in the late 1960s and 1970s. In 2002 it became Landcom, an oxymoronic state-owned corporation under the Landcom Corporation Act 2001. Its main purpose was to acquire land for urban development and other public uses to help moderate the housing market, stabilise land supply and “support the development industry”.
Homesite sales were to be made at the “lowest practicable price”. It supported the housing industry as governments escalated public housing sell-offs to developers in what had become high value areas. It also provided a ready cash flow to the state budget.
But there was a fight against these sell-offs. Some NSW trade unions stood up for public housing. The Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) slapped multi-site stop work green bans on the plans to demolish Sydney public housing from 1971 to 1975, as the government raised rents by up to 300% to force tenants out. The Green Ban was broken in 1974.
The Richmond Report
The NSW government’s 1983 Richmond Report, an inquiry into health services for the psychiatrically ill, found the support system for vulnerable tenants was on its knees. It recommended major mental health reform, including 10 years of aggressive de-institutionalisation. An exponential increase in the use of new psychiatric drugs followed. But, due to poor public policy and public housing authorities’ lack of foresight, the Richmond Report was not properly implemented.
Large numbers of previously institutionalised people suddenly became more vulnerable due to an underdeveloped, untested and under-resourced community-care model. The mentally ill, unemployed, disabled and ex-prisoners moved to public housing but none were given sufficient support services. This was a heinous policy failure from which public housing has never recovered.
With Menzies having laid the groundwork, and Labor and the Coalition increasingly supporting neoliberal policies, Prime Minister John Howard and Treasurer Peter Costello introduced negative gearing and capital gains tax exemptions in 1999. It was the final nail in the coffin of affordability and equity of access.
To this day, these tax incentives give huge tax breaks to investment property owners, effectively paying them to keep multiple houses empty.
Tenants’ rights
The cost to public housing tenants has been huge, particularly in NSW where the mismanagement has become a business model. The Independent Commission Against Corruption and other public inquiries have uncovered numerous cases of departmental and developer corruption. Tenants are waiting years, sometimes decades, for repairs and maintenance. The NSW Ombudsman also reported significant failures and delays in home modifications for the disabled.
Last year, a mother and a domestic violence survivor on the priority waitlist reported being sexually propositioned by a public housing staffer in return for faster placement.
A public housing tenant in southwest Sydney told Green Left that crime and assaults in their suburb are now so bad that visiting contractors wear chest cameras. “Yet we [vulnerable tenants] have no protection,” they said. When harassment and serious assault by other tenants are unresolved, the department commonly tells the victim to apply for a transfer.
NSW Labor’s response has been a departmental merge and more outsourcing. NSW Housing became Homes NSW on February 1 last year, merging housing and homelessness services including the NSW Aboriginal Housing Office, Department of Communities and Justice and the NSW Land and Housing Corporation (LAHC).
LAHC owns and maintains social housing properties across NSW, leased to residents by the Department of Communities and Justice. It also leases properties directly to community housing providers. NSW also outsources its maintenance and repair services to private contractors.
Premier Chris Minns’ Labor continues to raze increasingly rare public housing displacing communities. Even Labor’s own data shows people have become homeless, including in regional areas. Public and housing waiting lists are now up to 10 years and tens of thousands of applicants long.
Mental health support is still woefully inadequate, with a 2023 report showing services remain on the brink of collapse. Tenants advocacy organisations are also swamped.
The destruction of public housing in NSW is all but complete, with governments now defining it as “a public asset and ongoing expense that should be privatised if at all possible or alternatively handed over to community housing”.