A 30+ year underinvestment in public housing is turning into a national disaster. It has been universal across all government levles and all flavours of politics.
We’ve seen the proportion of public housing dwindle across the country to 4.7% of stock by 2021. Victoria has the lowest proportion, just 2.9% of all housing by 2022.
Growing need is exacerbated by increasingly fraight ability for delvering market “affordable” dwellings, which it did effectively until recently.
Instead of tackling the issues head on, governments have mostly foisted the affordable rental and purchase problem onto private sector – via growing contributions and ideas like inclusionary zoning.
Increasing imposts on private #development further reduces new supply, increasing the reliance on public support.
HAFF will deliver only 20,000 social & 20,000 #affordable homes across 5 years – just 3.3% of the Housing Accord’s 1.2m Target. It may be closer to 4.3% of actual new supply given poor approvals data.
The Victorian Government Social Housing Big Build was for 12,000 homes for $5.3B, but with demolitions, only increases social housing supply by 10% across the state. Credit where due – the “ground lease” model on some of the redevelopment sites is innovative and keeps public land public long term.
Either way, 96%+ of new housing needs to be delivered by private development. The focus seems always on the other 4%.
I still maintain Australia is best served by working towards restoring a healthy private market, but it should be supported by ongoing investment in public housing where it makes sense.
The obvious place ito use government-owned land, which effectively has the whole State subsidise housing as public infrastructure, instead of cross-subsidy from buyers in a particular project which only further impedes #feasibility.
So today, the Victorian Government announced (another) “Small Sites Pilot” to deliver mid–density housing in partnership with private sector across 4 middle suburban sites – Preston, Coburg, Alphington, and Malvern.
The problem is residual land value of the land, once affordable housing imposts are considered, could approach zero given the type of dwellings sought, at the price point they’d want them sold at.
Having participated in prior “pilot” procurements, commercial value realities could be hard to swallow for those in charge. But if it works, the model could work across many other government owned properties.
Then there is the Maribyrnong Defence Site, owned by Department of Defence – a meme in development circles. This site has bounced around multiple processes for decades; it would be something to see it happen in my lifetime in a form that approaches its true capacity. Not holding my breath.