Help save Victoria’s public housing
Last September, the Victorian Government announced its plans to tear down the 44 remaining tenanted Public Housing towers across Melbourne. The Government has claimed without providing evidence that these buildings are “no longer fit for modern living” and are not worth refurbishing.
The towers are currently home to some 10,000 public tenants who are now at risk of being displaced and dispersed. Homes Victoria did not meaningfully consult with residents before the Government’s plans were announced last year, and have avoided transparency and accountability about details of the redevelopment. While public tenants are being pressured to sign relocation agreements, there is no guarantee that they will have a legal right to return once the redevelopment is complete, nor that there will be space to accommodate all tenants who wish to return. Homes Victoria have also avoided being clear about whether the redeveloped buildings, which will be a mixture of social and private rentals, will include public or community housing (see the table below for key differences).
The lack of respect or care shown for public tenants by the Victorian Government in this latest plan echoes the COVID-19 hard lockdown of public housing towers in 2020. This impacted public tenants including those in the first three tenanted towers identified for demolition, 33 Alfred Street in North Melbourne, and 12 Holland Court and 120 Racecourse Road in Flemington. Tenants in these towers, still affected by the trauma of the hard lockdown, are again being forced to endure a top-down decision about their lives. The disregard shown by the Government towards public tenants across these estates also sits in a broader context of racial profiling by Victoria Police and racist vilification in the media of these communities, which include many families from Horn of Africa countries.
The most recent attack on the towers can be understood as part of a larger, long-term strategy by the Victorian Government to bring an end to public housing in the state. Rather than attending to widespread housing insecurity by investing in a form of housing tenure that will alleviate stress for some of the most marginalised members of our community, the Government has leaned further into market ‘solutions’ which have already been proven to fail. The withdrawal of Government investment in maintaining and building public housing has led to a deterioration over time in housing conditions for public tenants, with increasing wait times and inadequate responses to maintenance and repair requests. The Government’s decision to step back from housing provision has also involved a gradual process of replacing public housing with community housing, which is outsourced and run by private companies in the not-for-profit sector.
Why should you care about public housing?
While the quality of public housing properties has deteriorated over time, this is not inevitable: it can be corrected. Public housing should be treated as a vital form of social infrastructure and public investment and maintained as such. Demolishing public housing in the midst of a housing crisis
- Forced relocation harms current public tenants.
- Public housing tenants are fellow renters and members of our community. They deserve to be treated with dignity and to have a say in decisions made about their housing. Public tenants deserve our solidarity and support in the face of potential forced displacement.
- Forced displacement as a result of planned redevelopment comes at a significant cost to public tenants’ physical and mental health and overall wellbeing. As public tenants in the North Melbourne and Flemington towers have revealed, these impacts are felt well before any physical relocation occurs, as people are put into a state of limbo.
- Demolishing public housing puts additional stress on the Victorian Housing Register (VHR).
- Over 100,000 people are stuck on the VHR waiting for public or community housing. As at June 2023, there were a total of 55,822 new applications on the VHR. Public tenants forced to move because of the demolition will need to be housed in homes that could have been allocated to people still waiting on the VHR, where the average wait time for ‘priority’ applicants is 18.1 months.
- In Victoria, the proportion of applicants waiting for public housing and classified as of ‘greatest need’ has increased from 29% in 2014 to 54% in 2023. This means that not only are all applicants waiting longer to secure public and community housing, but the majority of those waiting are some of the most vulnerable people in our community.
- More public housing will have a positive effect on the housing market.
- The mass provision of non-market housing via either building or government acquisition of already-existing properties will have an impact on private rental costs. The larger the proportion of non-market housing relative to private rentals, the more private rental costs will have to adjust downwards to compete.
- More of us are renting than ever before and struggling to make ends meet.
- A lack of genuinely affordable housing options means that people who would otherwise be in public or community housing are forced to rely on the private market.
- An increasing proportion of the population are long-term renters, with less and less people able to afford either a deposit on a home or mortgage payments. If more of us are going to be renting in the future, then we need to look to examples of long-term and stable options for renting, which public housing models.
- Everyone deserves access to genuinely affordable housing.
- The public housing model of capping rent costs at 25% of income is a guarantee of housing affordability no matter what your income is. While decades of Government divestment from public housing has meant that allocations are now reserved for some of the most vulnerable members of our community, nobody should have to question whether they can afford to find somewhere to live.
- An income-based model of rent calculation means that rent costs only increase in proportion to the money you make rather than because of changes in the private market. This protects tenants against price-gouging from predatory landlords looking to make a greater profit off our essential need for shelter.
- Everyone deserves security from forcible displacement.
- Public housing tenancies are long-term, often lasting people’s whole lives. This is fundamentally different to the private rental model, where the average lease length of 12 months can force some renters to move every year in order to stay housed.
- Moving house is expensive! Removing the threat of forcible displacement caused by rent hikes or eviction or necessitated by unsafe housing conditions also means removing the financial stress of moving. Many people do not have access to the financial resources required to easily and affordably relocate if they are forced to do so.
| Private Housing | Community Housing | Public Housing | |
| Who owns your home? | A private owner, either an individual or an organisation. | A Community Housing Organisation (CHO), the Victorian Government, or a private owner. | The Victorian Government. |
| Who manages your tenancy? | The owner or their agent, via a real estate agency. | CHOs, which are private, not-for-profit housing agencies registered with the Victorian Government. | The Department of Families Fairness and Housing or a CHO authorised by the Victorian State Government. |
| How much rent will you pay? | Up to the discretion of the rental provider. | The Victorian Government caps community housing rents at 30% of a household’s income. However, housing costs can increase with the addition of any service charges or other property costs – these are applied at the discretion of the CHO. | Public housing rent is capped at 25% of a household’s income, or at market rate if this is lower. |
| How long can you stay? | Up to the discretion of the rental provider. The rental provider has the right to evict you, but must provide a reason for this. | Up to the discretion of CHO. CHOs have the right to evict you, but this is meant to be a last resort. | Generally long term. It is not as easy for the Government to evict you as it is for a private landlord or CHO. |
| Who can live here? | Up to the discretion of the rental provider. They are not legally allowed to discriminate based on ‘protected characteristics’ including race, gender, age, religion, sexuality or ability. | Applicants on the housing wait list who have asked to be considered for just Community or Public and Community Housing. Tenant approval is at the discretion of the CHO. They must also not discriminate based on ‘protected characteristics’. CHOs may have strict eligibility criteria (e.g. no history of mental illness/criminal record/drug and alcohol use etc.), or rules that tenants must follow to stay in the property (e.g. no smoking, no use of alcohol or other drugs). | Applicants on the housing wait list who have asked to be considered for just Public or Public and Community Housing. |
RAHU opposes these demolitions, we demand the government be transparent about its decision making, that it commit to ending the housing waiting list, and homes on this land remain PUBLIC housing. Our central demands are to retain, repair, and reinvest in public housing.
References
https://www.vic.gov.au/more-social-housing
https://www.northwestcitynews.com.au/this-was-out-of-the-blue-public-housing-community-left-in-limbo
https://policeaccountability.org.au/issues-and-cases/racial-profiling/
https://www.homes.vic.gov.au/applications-victorian-housing-register-vhr