By Wendy Hayhurst, CEO, Community Housing Industry Association

Here, down under in Australia, after thinking we had beaten back the virus, we are again anxious. Melbourne is in stage four lockdown; Sydney’s new case count is worrying; and our internal borders are shut.

The start of our second wave led to hard lockdown in nine Melbourne public housing towers, home to some of the most disadvantaged Australians, and we witnessed shocking scenes of police surrounding the buildings and preventing anyone exiting. All this with no warning and too little preparation.

The pandemic has thus brought into sharp relief Australia’s housing challenges. We have a serious and growing shortage of social and affordable housing – estimated to be approximately 650,000 in 2016 – and the absence of any plan to tackle this.

While over in the UK you may rightly bemoan social housing slipping to under 18% of all dwellings, here the decline from our 1990s high point (6%) continues apace with the latest figures showing a further drop to 4.3%. We’ve had books written, research papers published, data analysed, and campaigns waged about the problem but with little meaningful public policy responses.

At the last Australian national housing conference, international panellists were asked how their countries had got serious about housing and, without exception, they concluded it was a crisis that forced a response. In Ireland, the bottom fell out of the housing market; in
Canada, homeless people were dying in the streets; and in New Zealand it was leaky building syndrome – a legacy of poorly drafted building regulations.

So, is COVID-19 likely to produce serious action in Australia? Certainly, there was immediate action, triggered by public health concerns around infection and transmission from people rough sleeping or living in accommodation with shared facilities. These concerns led to state and territory governments mobilising resources to rapidly rehouse around 7,000 individuals in temporary accommodation – hotels, pop up shelters and student housing.

As yet, however, planning for the recovery (finding permanent housing for hotel homeless, responding to housing precariousness when evictions moratoriums are lifted, and income supports/ mortgage payment pauses are withdrawn) has been patchy at best.

Survey data from the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods suggests that one in four tenants had been unable to pay their rent on time during lockdown, with younger renters particularly badly affected – 44% report issues making payments. And, unfortunately, those households already in rental stress before the pandemic remain off the government’s radar.

So far so grim, but as housing advocates we have powerful arguments to make. If the social good isn’t persuasive then how about a cost-effective way of countering mass unemployment? Thanks to our National Housing Finance Investment Corporation (NHFIC), a sort of government equivalent to THFC, we have research that demonstrates that the construction investment multiplier is second highest out of the 114 industries that make up the economy. So, building homes would be great for our GDP.

But with house prices falling, migration on hold and many households either in financial stress or cautious about spending, where will demand for housing come from? Well, that’s easy to sort.

With partners in the homelessness and social services sectors we’ve been pushing the Social Housing Acceleration and Renovation Program (SHARP) – a two to three year emergency program for 30,000 social housing units and refurbishing existing homes, including retrofitting energy efficiency kit (we haven’t forgotten those devastating summer bushfires).

Our research demonstrates the program will support up to 18,000 FTE jobs each year and add around $6.7B to GDP (not far short of its cost to government). Along the advocacy avenue we are collecting supporters – property people, the unions, business, and the odd non left-leaning thinktank. There is even a pledge for politicians to sign.

And yes, 30,000 is a drop in our ocean of need but it will get us moving as we campaign for the longer-term investment program we so badly need, using the emerging evidence that housing investment can have positive impacts on productivity that far, far outweigh the cost.

So, will the government response be SHARP, or BLUNT (Build Less Units Now and Tomorrow)? Hard to tell but as we see the first COVID-19 cases in homes with shared facilities, housing some of the most vulnerable, there is a moral imperative to keep banging the drum. Wish us luck.