Hal Pawson

Confounding most predictions, by far the most significant housing impact of the pandemic in Australia has been the house price boom that took off in late 2020; stimulated by Government measures to boost private market demand, this has compounded longstanding unaffordability, inequality and indebtednessLess reported has been the rapid escalation in rent inflation from mid-2020, with annual national increases accelerating to over 8% by Q3 2021 – the fastest rate of increase for well over a decade, and far ahead of wage growth (at 1.7%); rents in regional Australia meanwhile surged by a remarkable 12.4% in the year to August 2021Damaging impacts of recent trends on rental affordability in regional Australia are confirmed by detailed figures for non-metropolitan Victoria showing the proportion of tenancies affordable to low-income tenants declining from 41% to 33% in the year to Q2 2021The key causes of recent regional rent inflation are likely to lie in new demand hitting markets where there is currently unusually low turnover in existing rental properties and new properties entering the rental sector – measured by new tenancy bonds lodged, private rental supply fell by 6% in 2020-21 in regional NSW and by 15% in regional VictoriaAfter the extraordinary rental policy responses of 2020 – eviction moratoriums, rent variation and rent relief schemes – similar actions in reaction to 2021 lockdowns were comparatively light. Whereas in 2020 all states and territories implemented eviction moratoriums, in 2021 only half imposed similar restrictions during Delta outbreaks – and notably the jurisdiction most affected, Victoria, enacted no second moratorium.The few published data indicate the incompleteness of the moratoriums: almost 3,000 South Australian tenancies were subject to eviction proceedings during the moratorium in 2020, and almost 4,600 tenancies were subject to termination proceedings in New South Wales in the first 10 weeks of its 2021 ‘stay at home’ lockdown.Most of the 2020 rent relief schemes were undersubscribed, reflecting the significance of federal income support programs, lack of engagement in rent negotiations and the weak delivery of relief through rebates on land tax (from which most landlords are already exempt).In both the boarding house sector, and in international student support, there are highly knowledgeable workers engaged directly with persons in need; their capacity could be enhanced and leveraged to inform support strategies for each sector.During 2020 at least 12,073 rough sleepers benefited from COVID-19 Emergency Accommodation (EA) programs staged by NSW, South Australia, Queensland, and Victoria, although in the first two of these, there has been no significant follow-through in terms of expanding permanent social and affordable housing provisionBy 2022 EA placements and move-on housing programs in NSW and Victoria alone will have facilitated safe, secure and supported accommodation pathways for around 3,500 former rough sleepers with complex needs; at least partially relieving the growing backlog of chronic rough sleepers built up over previous years.Unlike Victoria, the NSW Government has resisted calls for stimulus investment to significantly expand permanent social housing provision; as a result, longer term housing pathways for assisted former rough sleepers assisted in the state will be at the expense of others in severe housing need.In 2020 and 2021 four state governments announced significant self-funded social housing construction programs as a component of post-pandemic stimulus investment; these add up to nearly $10 billion to be invested over the next few years.In all, state/territory governments plan to construct over 23,000 social housing units over the three years from 2021-22; a threefold increase on national social housebuilding rates during the late 2010s, and comparable in scale to the Rudd Government’s post-GFC Social Housing Initiative (2009-12).The scale of planned development in Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania, will (at least temporarily) reverse historically declining representation of social housing in these states; in other jurisdictions a continuing contraction in the sector’s share of all dwellings is in prospect, with NSW’s social housing set to fall below 4% of total occupied stock within 10 years (for reference, the OECD average is 7.1%).While both remarkable and badly needed, Australia’s recent social housing construction revival is not only patchy across the country, but also unsustainable without a reversal in current Australian Government policy eschewing additional financial support to enable social housing growth (whether via public or community housing)

The rising tide of counter-anti-social behaviour (ASB) legislation and the continuing salience of the issue in political and media debates in part reflect how unruly and yobbish behaviour blights some local communities. However, the prominence of ASB as a'national problem'is ...

Four years after its announcement, the Queensland government last week cancelled the central plank in the Logan Renewal Initiative: the overhaul of Logan’s 4,900 public housing dwellings by a community-housing-provider-led consortium. The initiative is a planned 20-year strategy to reshape Logan, an outer-suburban centre in Brisbane’s southeast. It would have been Australia’s largest and most-ambitious residential urban regeneration project

This international knowledge exchange project explored the conventional housing policy narratives that have dominated government thinking in Australia, Britain and Canada (the ABC countries) over the past 20-30 years. It sought to construct more effective, progressive policy narratives robust enough to thrive within the tough competitive environments that prevail within public policy-making and budgetary processes.The collaboration involved three academic partner organisations – University of Glasgow, University of Toronto and UNSW – as well as a constellation of industry and government bodies in the three countries. These included the Australian not-for-profit entities Bridge Housing Ltd, Brisbane Housing Company, Community Housing Ltd, and Housing Choices.The project sought to draw on published and ongoing research, as well as learning from the direct experience of communities, city halls, boardrooms and governments – represented through the non-academic partner organisations. Academic-industry interchange was achieved through international workshop events in Sydney and Toronto, as well as through a series of broader industry consultation events in Australia, Britain and Canada 2016-2018

This article unpacks the connection between a growing cohort of small‐scale but purposive property investors and urban socio‐spatial restructuring. We analyse private rental housing as a tenure share to demonstrate its spatial correlation with the suburbanisation of socio‐economic disadvantage in Sydney, Australia, between 1991 and 2016. Then, we show how investors drive this emerging pattern by reference to the geography of property owners’ stated investment objectives—low capital outlay, rental yields, and capital growth prospects. We contend that the link between their small‐scale activities and the city’s changing socio‐spatial structure is an overlooked consequence of private rental sector (PRS) housing financialisation. Importantly, our focus on behaviours exhibited by small‐scale rental property owners in PRS financialisation transcends existing analyses that have concentrated on corporate entity activity in this space. That focus also contrasts with framings of private rental growth as a residual outcome of developments elsewhere in the housing market. Such work is significant because it demonstrates the impacts of real estate investment on urban form.

The homelessness monitor is a longitudinal study providing an independent analysis of the homelessness impacts of recent economic and policy developments in England. It considers both the consequences of the post-2007 economic and housing market recession, and thesubsequent recovery, and also the impact of policy changes. This fifth annual report updates our account of how homelessness stands in England in 2016, or as close to 2016 as data availability allows. It also highlights emerging trends and forecasts some of the likely future changes, identifying the developments likely to have the most significant impacts on homelessness. While this report focuses on England, parallel homelessness monitors are published for other parts of the UK

The Homelessness Monitor series is a five year study that provides an independent analysis of the homelessness impacts of recent economic and policy developments in Scotland and elsewhere in the UK. This update report provides an account of how homelessness stands in Scotland in 2015 and how things have changed since the ‘baseline’ Homelessness Monitor Scotland report was published in 201

Indigenous peoples remain among the most disadvantaged Australians in terms of their housing needs. This chapter begins by discussing the historical and cultural factors and past policy approaches that helped to shape the specific housing needs of Indigenous Australians in both urban and remote geographic settings. The chapter continues by critically examining contemporary policy approaches to addressing Indigenous disadvantage and the barriers to achieving better housing outcomes. Policy responses are shown to have been complex and highly volatile, characterised by frequent changes in direction and shifting responsibilities across governments. Key challenges in the social housing, home ownership and private rental service systems are described. A central theme is consideration of how housing policies could be better aligned with cultural values and Indigenous aspirations.

In Australia, as in many other developed countries, provision of public housing (a form of social housing) formed a core component of housing policy for lower-income earners for much of the twentieth century post-1945. Despite its proportionately small and shrinking size in Australia (less than 5% of all dwellings), the sector’s vital social role makes it a continuing central concern in policy debates.The chapter first reviews the history of public housing in Australia from 1945 to the present. This highlights the sector’s emergence, evolution and changing roles, its progressive residualisation, its increasingly financially stressed condition and recent renewal strategies. Secondly, the chapter explains post-1980s policy moves to diversify social housing through the promotion of not-for-profit community housing providers (CHPs), including experimentation with public housing transfers to CHPs.

As shown in this report, the past 30 years has seen Australia’s social housing sector capacity effectively cut by more than half. This at a time when the incidence of rental housing stress and homelessness has substantially increased. Largely drawing on existing published statistics and policy documents, this research investigates the resulting effects for low income earners seeking social housing.

The report examines the ways that Australia’s state and territory governments have attempted to manage the growing pressures on social housing as an increasingly scarce resource. It reveals the ways that eligibility rules and allocations priorities shape applicants’ social housing prospects and the aggregate outcomes that result. In particular, it attempts to unravel the apparent paradox whereby the point-in-time number of social housing waiting list applications in 2021 remained little changed from 2006, in the face of growing need for such accommodation. The report also highlights gross inadequacies in Australia’s published official statistics on social housing supply and demand as a basis for effective policymaking. It also recommends some key priorities for statistical collection and publication reforms.

Shifts in international investment markets, in Australia’s demographic profile and in residential consumer sentiment have recently combined to enhance the prospects for the emergence of a ‘mainstream market’ Build-to-Rent (BtR) sector in this country. This refers to the purpose-built apartment blocks designed for use as rental housing and intended to be held long-term in single ownership as revenue-generating assets. Our report is first in-depth independent study of BtR in Australia, and among the first that has focused specifically on this residential product in any national setting.

Based on a large body of industry, government and not-for-profit housing stakeholder interviews, the report investigates the interpretation of the BtR concept in Australia and the way this might unfold. Drawing on case study evidence from four case study BtR-type projects, the report goes on to calibrate the financial feasibility of various possible BtR archetypes in the Australian urban setting. As part of this, it quantifies the feasibility challenges associated with a range of Federal and state/territory government tax settings and assesses the case for their modification.

In the context of the contribution that a growing BtR sector could make to certain important public policy objectives, the report concludes that Australian governments should be doing more to enable such developments.

In this, the first comprehensive overview of housing policy in Australia for 25 years, we explore the economics, politics and administration of housing provision. We identify and explain the many dimensions of housing affordability and government actions affecting affordability outcomes. Building on this analysis we lay out priorities for the transformational national strategy needed for a fairer and more productive housing system.