And we don't need a book on the topic, someone needs to put a pdf up on the internet of a proposed policy change.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Australia
In NSW public housing land that was established a generation or two ago has been sold off to private developers. At most there's been lip service about some low percentage of "affordable housing" being made available in the new development, but often not enforced.
The public housing stock is being depleted because of funding for repairs and renovations being cut short or eliminated entirely. There's a huge number of properties which are not able to be occupied because of roofs leaking, mould, and more.
Meanwhile, private housing is getting more and more expensive in large part by investors buying up and renting out property for top dollar.
As for a policy change:
Let multiple problems solve each other.
We have a shortage of skilled trades. We have unemployment issues. We have a whole lot of properties that need to be maintained and renovated.
Lets employ skilled tradespeople to teach and train new generations using public housing as the training ground. Renovate, rebuild if necessary existing properties. Build new homes and communities.
1) Government housing needs to accommodate disabled people so it costs a lot more to build. They outsource the building of it to contractors. They get screwed over by these contractors since no public servant has the guts to hold contractors to account
2) The Minister wants to support some noble thing a charity is doing in this space, so the Government give land/houses to charities to manage public housing. These charities are poor at managing it until they give up and sell it off. This reduces the public housing stock.
3) A small number of tenants do significant damage to their public house. They then have to get re-housed as the government is liable if they hurt themself due to an unsafe living environment (that they caused). This costs significant amounts to fix (which again is done by contractors who's crew the government over).
4) Anyone with a sob story (refugee, whatever) demands they need a house that has a bedroom for each member of their large family. If they are given a smaller house they complain to the minister until they get moved to a new larger house. This means that housing stock that was built in the past won't meet these demands and new larger houses are needed, again taking away money from being able to mass build cheap houses increasing housing stock to meet the demand of those who need housing.
5) People who can afford renting privately hide income to get cheap housing from the government. Public housing tenants who do need public housing do the same to basically avoid paying a reasonable rental amount.
My grandparents had public housing. They treated it as their own home. They respected what had been given to them. Social housing as a concept is fucked because the social contract has been fucked.
In my mind anyone who destroys or significantly damages public housing as a tenant should be banned from ever getting public housing.
Except for government getting ripped off by contractors, which extends far beyond the need for disability housing, the causes you give are minor issues. They're the issues that pop up on tabloid news sites and TV shows.
The largest cause for it being under-resourced is because of decades of government cuts and freezes on spending.
Properties are being damaged because the government is not funding repairs and maintenance.
You can report something minor (say a window leaking), and it'll sit in a queue for a year or two before it gets looked at. Meanwhile the tenant tries to do a patch job themselves, but that really only slows things down - and the leak is now developing into a mould issue in the cupboards/wall. So now the entire kitchen needs to be replaced and your $150 repair job is now a $15k kitchen renovation job.
This happens with other things like roof leaks, where the entire property is now a health hazard due to black mould everywhere, and the tenants having to be relocated.
Meanwhile, the department does not have funds to acquire/build new property - so every loss of a property due to poor maintenance is that much more impactful.
Combine that with our aging population and yeah - we're not even close to "It's the refugees with the massive family" being even close to a real cause.
These small minority of tenants impose significant costs on public housing, which then means the government doesn't have the funding to build more houses.
A lack of minor maintenance as you describe is due to shoddy contractors ripping off the government, doing a sub-standard job. They are responsible for doing that maintenance, and cut costs by avoiding call-outs until its significant and then do a half arsed job fixing it.
Your own source says that public housing is a small percentage of housing and is at a 40 year low.
I encourage you to actually read your source
No human being should be able to make recurring profit from the need to put a basic roof over your head.
I know a significant number of people who prefer renting because of the onerousness of ownership.
Who is going to rent to them if they can't profit from it?
Parent said that nobody should be able to profit, this will not eliminate the rental market. You can still own housing and rent it out and take a rent that covers your cost (including the work you need to do in order to rent it out).
This is already well established. Public housing also does not run on prayers and good intentions - and yet they manage to pay salary to contractors and run the administrative burden.
The only cost there is associated with public housing is the opportunity cost which is indeed something the parent commenter argues should never be a concern in areas regarding core human needs - like shelter.
Public housing runs because the people administrating it have no disincentives to making poor decisions because ultimately it’s the tax payer who pays.
All this guarantees is a two-tier system. Owners and basic rental properties available.
Idk, what do you think is fair? In most rent controlled systems there is a per sqm pre-allowed rent. If you take out a mortgage that you can not service a mortgage with this rent-level, then you are at fault. On the contrary, if you don't have a mortgage, then you can pay yourself a higher salary for maintaining your rental unit.
However, if you "win the lottery" and get a house for free, don't you have the moral obligation to not maximize your rental income? You really don't need all this money (this discussion, btw, also goes into the nature of inheritance tax, where one could argue that a fair society should tax you in a way that forces you to take out a mortgage on the house you inherit - after all, you did not work for it)
The core of this is to what extend housing should be a part of a free market.
IMHO, there is plenty of opportunity right now - just move a out of the big cities and you get housing thrown at you. I do see an insistence on wanting to live in a few select cities followed by complaints that it is expensive.
Those markets are frequently characterised by poorly maintained rental stock.
>Don’t you have a moral obligation
No.
Those markets are frequently characterised by poorly maintained rental stock.
>Don’t you have a moral obligation
No.
Sure, you get what you pay for.
> No.
That is fair. You definitely represent the profit obsessed sentiments that put money ahead of people. I hope you go bankrupt in a crash of a bubble with nothing but your own greed to thank.
Why would anyone put in the time and capital to own and maintain housing, if they knew they were limited to charging only their costs? What's in it for the owners? Who would build or finance a dense, multiunit housing if it was impossible to profit?
> Public housing also does not run on prayers and good intentions - and yet they manage to pay salary to contractors and run the administrative burden.
My understanding is that public housing gets budget from government and not solely from rents. I don't see how that establishes that at cost rental is viable, unless you're suggesting that all rentals be public housing?
The intention is indeed to make it less favorable to rent out housing. That should not come as a shock. If such legislation was put in effect, we would likely see more people owning their own units and lower housing prices.
And it is not a foreign idea. The Anglo world (Australia and the US in particular) are really good at making legislation that makes it favorable for foreign entities to by up REITs and earn some buck of the fact that Australians and Americans can hardly pay their rent.
But try looking at the Austrian housing market and compare it.
> My understanding is that public housing gets budget from government and not solely from rents.
I think the governments pay for land - which again is highly inflated because of the current legislation. This is what I talked about re. opportunity cost.
I get that that sounds nice, but won't it also make it much harder to move? Rental housing is valuable for owners because there's potential profit, but it's valuable for renters because there's flexibility. If you've got to sell your house and buy another everytime you move, that makes it harder to move to get a better job. If you've got to wait for a public housing opening, that makes it nearly impossible. If peole can't move for a better job, employers have a narrower scope of competition, which adds to downward pressure on wages and benefits.
I think the the dominant sentiment is that it is currently too hard to get long term shelter.
Also, these thing are not binary. It is not whether it is possible to rent or not. it is what fraction of the housing stock are under what regime - something we should adjust with needs.
Exactly, build a house for yourself then bugger off. People who cant afford it would get govt housing. If you want a big house with lots of rooms then you would be in the first category.
It certainly will. Why would anyone sit in a rental property that makes no money rather than just put it in a savings account? Even with how bad the return on investment is for savings accounts, it's miles better than 0. Sure a private entity can still rent technically but they wouldn't. Let's not consider what's legal, let's consider what people would actually do.
That leaves one entity who will be willing to rent, the government. Nevermind the incredibly poor reputation that government housing has, how will they set prices? What effect will that have on private home ownership in general? What effect will that have on personal my mobility? I would have great concerns that you'd be stuck where you were born doing the same job your parents did because nobody would ever leave their guaranteed housing in high opportunity areas.
And what of commercial real estate?
And then we circle back to public housing. A thing that already exists and nobody wants to be in. Once the rental market is destroyed and the housing market follows because individual house sellers can't compete with the government funded and subsidized rental market, nearly everyone will live in public housing where a faceless beaurocrat is responsible for the maintenance of thousands of properties that they really don't care about. Low income neighborhoods will have underfunded repair services with ling wait times and shoddy workmanship while the nice neighborhoods will enjoy prompt service by qualified technicians.
I get that the current situation isn't great but it'd be nice to come up with a better solution than destroying the whole housing market in favor of what would inevitably lead to Soviet style housing projects[1].
How do they price housing? If there an area if the country that's a great place to live but it's all full if renters and owners, how do I move there if I get a job there? Look at how hard it is for people to get into rent controlled places in NYC.
If I'm born into an are with very little employment opportunity, it seems like my chances for upward mobility are extremely hampered.
I agree with you in principle, but I don't see a path out.
See Singapore. Govt is the biggest landlord there (but the reason they did it was not because they cared about human rights or anything, but as a part of "infra" development to draw in foreign investment and MNCs and their employees to set up shop in Singapore). It has worked out quite well on both fronts.
Vienna, Austria is also constantly used as an example - https://www.visitingvienna.com/culture/social-housing/