A report commissioned by the Australian Housing and Urban
Research Institute has found the amount of public housing nationwide has fallen
over the course of this decade, compounding the difficulties of the less
well-off in Sydney,
the most expensive city in the country.
“Public housing is the bedrock of affordable
housing,” Dr Jon Hall, senior
research associate at RMIT University in Melbourne and one of the authors of
the study, said. “You have to fix this part of the system.”
The research highlights policy changes forced on the state
housing departments by the Federal Government, which give priority to those
most in need.
It says this has left public housing dominated by people
living on pensions, unable to pay the higher rents needed to finance overdue
maintenance costs. They now make up nearly one in three of all people in public
housing, up from one in five a decade ago.
“This policy has been dumped in most advanced
countries, due to the distortion it introduces in managing public housing,
since it results in rising costs of public housing, pressuring the public
purse, and making it more difficult for governments to continue to expand the
amount of public housing available,” Dr Hall said.
“Most advanced countries seek to get a mix of
low-income [earners] and the needy into public housing. In the past, new
dwellings were added every year, increasing the amount of public housing. But
that is not happening now.”
This policy has resulted in the annual “loss” from
public housing in NSW running at about $300 million, compared with only about
$100 million for states such as Victoria and Queensland, the research
found.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/call-for-public-housing-review/2007/10/21/1192940905061.html