If you didn’t know better, you would think someone is trying to hide the embarrassing detail of Australia’s escalating housing crisis.

“I found this stat buried where no one else would have paid attention,” says Propertyology boss, and confessed data nerd Simon Pressley.

“As of June 2020, there were 282,241 government owned, rental properties. We go back to 1991, which is, 29 years earlier and we have 395,049 government owned dwellings. So, we’ve been flogging them off. Secretly selling them off.” There is little chance to miss the exasperation in Simon’s voice.

“We sold off 100,000 properties. We needed them when we had eight million less people living here - so how come we don’t [need them] now?

The disparity in need and solution is confirmed by UNSW Professor of Social Housing Research and Policy, Hal Pawson, who has reviewed the entirety of homes used to shelter Australians experiencing housing stress.

“This reflects a quarter-century of near-stagnation in social housing stock in Australia. While the national population is now 41% higher than in 1996, social housing has expanded by just 3% over that period.”

It leads even the most optimistic amongst us to ask - what the hell has happened?

The more complex concern is how do we, as a country, fix it? What does social housing look like in 2022? Is it rental assistance, is it low cost loans for buyers, or simply more stock? There is a catalogue of acronyms of well-meaning folk who say they can help. But for the rent stressed, the near homeless and actual homeless, this mish mash adds to the merry-go-round of referrals, of legislations and shifting eligibility criteria that has made a mockery of statistics regarding waiting lists and applicants.

If one were to be Machiavellian in thinking, one might say how clever the puppet masters have been – making the application process so convoluted and laborious that it wipes out a lot of potential applicants who, defeated by the shifting goal posts and empty promises, have simple given up trying, after which state and federal statisticians bask in the adulation of a system which has seen, wait for it, a fall in applications. Huzzah!

In Pawson’s revealing and detailed report, Managing Access to Social Housing in Australia; Unpacking Policy Frameworks and Service Provision Outcomes there is far more light than shade in the statistics.

In the three years to 2021 there was national, overall growth in housing waiting lists of 16 percent, represented by 164,000 households on hold, with some states (i.e. Queensland, who’s waiting list for housing by 2020-21 blew out over four years by 78 percent) in a much worse position than other states.

Compounding the housing dilemma is the Covid pressure; people and businesses lost income, though many received some limited financial support. People’s attitude to life in general took a hit, with many city dwellers either moving to the rural zones, which put upward pressure on the market and saw the housing situations worsen for local people, who became priced out of the market. And finally, the displacement of more than 40,000 people due to a never-ending downpour from the heavens for much of 2021-22.

While other countries such as New Zealand have committed considerable funds during this time to protect those in housing stress, the Australian federal Government has, sat on its hands.

“The national level of government has had less direct involvement or interest in this than any other country [examined in the research], including federations like USA and Canada,” says Professor Pawson.

It is a scarce commodity, so there had to be a way of rationing the resource. Here come the goal posts once again – Citizenship is the first hurdle, followed by income. The income component jumps around depending on statehood. The trigger for people getting off the list into a home is availability followed by the desperation priority – the direst get a key, the less go back down the list. It can, and does take years of waiting to find a home. The impact on legitimately needy families, and singles, is more than considerable.

Anglicare, a major force in helping the homeless and near homeless sees the situation as an emergency. Their point of view is well respected, as is their face to face experience with the people involved, and their focus on the over 55, single, demographic. Many too old to work, not due for a pension, and with failing health. Largely hidden from view, this group is truly running out of time to find a hand.

On a positive note, and we need one about now, Australian architects are designing some marvellous homes for this sector, including those for the not for profit Abound Communities (established in in 1869) whose retirement villages should be the gold benchmark in design for independent living, as seen in their most recent MSG designed Old Colonists’ Association of Victoria Leith Park village in Victoria , which offers 118 self-contained independent living homes provided within vibrant and beautiful buildings, surrounded by bushland.

But it’s not enough, not by a long shot.

Where then, do we find the housing, and what does it look like?

Pragmatist Simon Pressley sees four potential solutions; a house fairy may appear and sprinkle homes across the landscape, the Governments (state and federal) will find money under a rock and build them – but we’ve seen how that goes and let’s face it, housing is not the only priority for a government drowning in post Covid debt, or somehow existing homes will suddenly become available – and then, the final option.

“The fourth option is we say well, who’s actually got the money and the drive to fix this? Oh yeah, that’s those bastards we don’t like, those investors. “

Indeed, there has not been a stone left unturned in trying to find ways to drive investors out of the market – painted as gold chained, slick haired multimillionaires with more money than Zeus, investors have been forced from the market. However, the vast majority of investors were people who bought a property as their retirement nest egg, which they rented out ‘til their time came to put their hard-working feet up on the couch for a well-earned, and self-funded, retirement.

The home stressed are growing and their voices are rising. The new federal government has sensed the unrest and come out swinging with a plan that fits nicely into a ten second sound bite. $10 billion will be made available to fix homelessness in Australia. More or less.

There’s a sort of magician’s trick employed by governments; of making you look at his left hand waving a red handkerchief, while his other hand is stashing the rabbit onto the hat.

The nitty gritty of this grand promise is vague, beyond the “30,000 dwellings over 5 years”, from where is the $10b being sourced? What is being sacrificed to make this pledge? What sort of dwellings? Do we see a resurgence of the brutalist and institutional styled high rise blocks of the 60s? Or is it all 100sqm townhouses and strata levies? In CBDs or rural? And what about the percentage required for the elderly or physically disabled? And where will they be? Back ‘o Bourke, or CBD, or blissfully everywhere.

And even more damning is the statement from the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) who say we need 25,000 new dwellings per year to make a dent in the issue.

Happily, and far, far away from Canberra, people with agile and informed minds, and a vision for the future, have been working on the problem of social housing in Australia for some time; they formed Nightingale.

The Nightingale Project, an architect-led trial of low cost, sustainable, centrally located apartment buildings was the brainchild of Andrew Maynard, Clare Cousins and Jeremy McLeod. This concept saw architects in the driver’s seat finding funding, designing and then managing the building of the dwellings. Nightingale 1, by Breathe Architects opened in Melbourne’s Brunswick in 2017, seen by some as a blend of Kumbaya optimism and sustainable design, they did (and do) look great. A Camelot of sorts, it saw a bright and perfect low cost solution by creating affordable housing, funded by the many individual apartment owners, with a licensed national rollout a long-term plan.

In that first-year Nightingale produced 20 homes – fast forward to 2022 and according to a spokesman they have now 362 delivered homes, with a further 235 in construction, and plans for a further 570 in the works in states across the country. Community centric housing has found its market – and offers a solution to providing approachable prices (the Teilhouse homes in Melbourne, part of the Nightingale organisation, start out at a very approachable $275,000) thanks to means tests, resale caps and a non-biased ballot purchasing system.

In 2021 Nightingale became a not for profit arrangement, which saw some of the original purity of concept take on a little shade – but hey, they are still part of the solution, even if the inner workings are, perhaps necessarily, morphing over time.

Looking overseas for solutions is for the most part, disheartening. The much-vaunted rent control apartments of New York are starting to age out. It was begun during and just after the inter war period, when returning soldiers and new families were open to price gouging by landlords. The current NYC rent control applies to tenants who have lived in their apartments since 1971 (and their direct descendants) and also to old buildings built prior to 1947.

It has resulted in some landlords taking an estimated 40 percent hit. Once rent controlled buildings are sold off, there is evidence that building values rose by 40 percent as did neighbouring homes. Investor encouragement, to use the vernacular, it ain’t. And in any event, it still comes down to having the actual dwellings.

For a step into what the future may hold, and as a warning of what might be around the corner, there is nothing more intriguing than the Saudi project currently doing the rounds; The Line, Neom City. A dystopian, completely manufactured city that extends as a 200-metre-wide strip, for 170 kilometres, in a straight line.

It is a revolution in design, concept, visualisation – call it what you will, and try not to use the word terrifying. A future where nine million people will inhabit a footprint of just 34 square kilometres. It offers answers to all the questions of sustainability, with a controlled environment. Funny how that word ‘controlled’ sends a shiver down one’s spine.

Is this where we are now? Looking toward a future that by necessity is so cheek-by-jowl, so unnatural and overly engineered and yes, controlled, by government and mega companies? Surely not. We cannot, and should not leave all the work, and responsibility just to just a few. Australia has some of the best architects, designers and minds in the world, the vast majority of which I am sure have graceful solutions in cyberspace, just waiting for someone to say here’s the money, we’re behind you 100 percent, GO! DO!

The most capable people to say that are the private investors; what they need is the to be given the power to shoulder some of the responsibility. They want to do it. What we need is government to stop limiting their potential. Australia is bigger than Sydney and Melbourne, we have to regulate and plan for all sizes of community.

Allow local market forces, local investment and local buyers a chance to settle down after a couple of bloody hard years, and find their natural level. It’s not a matter of handing out incentives, it is perhaps a matter of letting, and assisting people find local solutions.

What will drive this change? Or will governments of all shapes and sizes (though State governments are deserving some praise here) continue to stymy our progress? When will we reach a point when something has to give, when people will actually rise and demand a solution that works long term? There seems to be just one answer, and it comes from Simon Pressley.

“It will only end when governments say we’ve had enough of the pain and that pain is in the form of having a small rental pool but huge global embarrassment when a great number of good Aussies will be living in caravans, tents, garages and other people sofas. That’s when it will end.”

Image: Nightingale by Peter Clarke

Prue Miller

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