Australia was defined as a “property-owning democracy” according to Robert Menzies. Which blinds us to the urgency of the number one issue of inequality, poverty and injustice: the failure of social housing. But before we talk about social housing, let’s talk about two key facts that define the housing market.

One, we are obsessed with home ownership and have been for 120 years, in which time we’ve gone from the world’s best to near worst. At Federation, 50% of homes were owner-occupied, the highest rate in the world. Once as high as 70% in the 70s, ownership is 65% and falling. We are 42^nd out of 52 industrialised countries, behind the USA, the UK, most of Europe and Scandinavia, and many Eastern bloc countries. So, we haven’t achieved our number one goal.

Two, Australian housing policy is an oxymoron, twice over. Retrogressive tax initiatives like negative gearing promote multiple house ownership for those that have a house, at the expense of those without one. Yet the Federal Government’s failed obsession with home ownership has not only failed to deliver, it has also ignored social housing as well.

There is a fast-rising need to house the poor, often mistakenly called social and affordable housing. Two very different things.

The second lowest income quintile, often called the working poor, need affordable housing, which is where the rent is a lower proportion of the market value of the building
The lowest income quintile, social wage earners, unemployed or homeless, need social housing, where the rent is a proportion of their income.

Very different. For today, let’s talk about the latter, social housing.

Social Housing

Housing for the poorest is usually provided by the public purse. Hence, the term public housing. But in Australia that’s a dirty word sullied by association with housing commissions and ‘housos’. Hence, we now use social housing, a misnomer since not all the occupants are socially waged. But it’s a term we are stuck with, just like social distancing that’s really spatial distancing.

After every major war and depression, there has been a push worldwide to address the resulting housing crisis. Unfortunately, Australia has missed, or misused, every opportunity, so a little history is in order to avoid repeating past mistakes. Let’s go from zero to hero.

Social housing 1880-1900

Housing in Victorian times was either freestanding houses, which were owner-occupied, or rows of terraces, which were rented. Terraces, so called for their repetitive sequence, were the principal typology in Sydney and Melbourne and were built by the developers of the day, naming them after their wife or daughter, and were rented out to families, with three generations and 10 or more per house.

By the end of the century, 50% of houses were owner-occupied, 45% were privately rented, and the remaining 5% were owned by local councils and others such as the Sydney Harbour Trust, which had acquired houses in The Rocks and Millers Pt. In 1900, when there was an outbreak of bubonic plague. The Trust-owned houses were let at subsidised rent to waterside workers. This was our first ‘publicly owned housing’.

Social housing 1900-1915

At the turn of the century, there was an international movement to reform housing from a social point of view, but that was not of interest to the newly formed Federal government, who considered it a state matter, which it has remained ever since.

The NSW government was the first to address public housing with the Housing Act of 1912, and the NSW Housing Board planned the first public housing estates in Australia. Introduced by state treasurer Roland Dacey, he proclaimed, “We propose to establish a garden city and to offer people healthy conditions for living… will yield big dividends to the nation… that is how Australia builds its garden cities.”

Sadly, the visionary Dacey died soon after, and his vision was not built until after WW1, but his name is commemorated in the first of those garden city public housing estates, Daceyville, near UNSW south of Sydney CBD.

At the same time as the Housing Act of 1912 was passed, the NSW government also passed legislation to advance the control of deposits and mortgage financing so that workers could own their own homes. Dacey’s nascent social liberal reform ran second to encouraging housing in the private market.

Social housing Post WW1 - 1929

Following the Great War, the Federal Government established the War Service Homes Commission in 1919, which offered low-interest loans to return servicemen in order to construct or buy a house, promoting private home ownership and avoiding housing being dependent on the old private rental model.

The NSW Housing Board was disbanded in the late twenties, another instance where the government prioritised home ownership over the public supply of rental housing.

Social housing 1930-WW2

The provision of all housing was seriously delayed by the Great Depression, but then followed a number of public housing initiatives by various States in a desire to provide housing for those who were poor.

Many of the old private and church housing estates fell into disrepair, and a Methodist social reformer, Frederick Oswald Barnett, drew attention to them as ‘slums’ and was instrumental in forming the Housing Investigation and Slum Abolition Board in Victoria in 1936. A similar housing slums investigation committee was formed in NSW leading to a Housing Improvement Board established from 1936 to 1942.

A building act enquiry committee in South Australia led to the creation of the SA Housing trust in 1937; the Victorian Housing Commission was created in 1938 and the NSW Housing Commission in 1942; and in Tasmania public housing provision was promoted through a housing division in the Agricultural Bank in 1935.

Social housing in WW2

In 1943, the Commonwealth Housing Commission (CHC) was established by a board of inquiry appointed by Ben Chifley, minister for post-war reconstruction. It concluded: “We consider that a dwelling of good standard and equipment is not only the need but the right of every citizen; whether the dwelling is to be rented or purchased, no tenant or purchaser should be exploited for excessive profits.”

Thus, the CHC promoted housing as a right for all Australians, targeted to low-income workers: “…it has been apparent for many years that private enterprise, the world over, has not adequately and hygienically been housing the low-income group.”

The CHC report of 1944 made detailed proposals and recommendations to the Federal Government, most of which were ignored, and instead the 1945 Commonwealth State Housing Agreement (CSHA) was established for the Commonwealth to fund public housing via loans to the States, a system which has continued in various forms to this day.

Social housing after WW2

Immediately after the second world war, the States operated public housing schemes in varying ways. In NSW and Victoria the public housing focus was on slum clearance to rehouse those in poverty, preference being given to large families and those recently returned from service.

In 10 years after the WW2 state housing authorities built almost 100,000 dwellings for public rental, one in every seven dwellings built in Australia. The NSW Housing Commission built almost 38,000 of those dwellings, 18% of all dwellings built in NSW. The majority of the housing built were detached houses in ‘garden city’ plans in middle and outer suburban areas, such as Green Valley and Mount Druitt in Sydney.

Less in number but more visually prominent were the flats. Initially walk up blocks of 3 to 4 levels but later high-rise towers of 20 to 30 storeys in Sydney and Melbourne. In 1946 the Victorian Housing Commission repurposed a Commonwealth Tank Factory as the ‘Housing Factory’ for the production of concrete panels for prefabricated houses and flats.

Eventually 27 towers using those precast concrete panels were built across 19 suburbs in Melbourne. Housing towers were vilified in Melbourne and Sydney for their stark visual presence, but moreover for gathering too many people of the same socio-economic status in one place, typified by violence, drugs and suicides. The irony is there were far more tenants in suburban houses, largely indistinguishable from everyone else's housing.

End Part One

That’s a high point in numbers, if not design, which brings us to the end of our history of social housing, part one.

Cross-Sections are Friday musings from Tone Wheeler, following on from the Tone on Tuesday columns (where much of this was discussed in July 2023). Remember: amateurs draw plans, professionals draw sections; never at cross purposes.

Tone Wheeler

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