In/formal housing - is more formality the answer?

This is the text of an address I gave to the Housing Theory Symposium 2019 on 30th May. Thank you to the organisers, Dr Jathan Sadowski whose tweet is linked below and Dr Sophia Maalsen, for the invitation. For those who were in the room, there may have been hesitation, repetition or deviation from these written notes which I have not adjusted to reflect.

The 2019 Housing Theory Symposium on in/formalism is in full swing! We have a brilliant keynote session with housing advocates @LeoPatRoss and @shelternsw, with @Planosopher launching a policy report on housing informality and vulnerability. pic.twitter.com/mnnhyHvsv8

— Jathan Sadowski (@jathansadowski) May 30, 2019

Thank you for inviting me to speak today. I’d also like to acknowledge that we have gathered on unceded lands of the Gadigal and pay my respects to elders past and present, and extend those respects to any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people in the room. It’s significant we are meeting in National Reconciliation Week whose theme is Grounded in Truth – a demand for a truth-telling that will allow all the people of this land to move forward together.

Australia has historically and continues to be adept at ignoring the suffering of people who it doesn’t really consider full citizens, and even furthering injustice through that wilful ignorance. While incomparable to the racially motivated horrors of Australian-Aboriginal relations, people who rent their homes – especially at the fringes of the private rental sector – suffer shades of this ignorance and lack of truth-telling – or perhaps, a lack of listening to the truth being told. Like water, and like housing, truth can be hard to grasp.

I’m to sketch out the housing landscape - I’m going to take a pretty broad view of that brief and sketch out some thoughts on how we have forgotten many people who rent their home.

An important part of how we construct informal housing is the support of the state for it. A property owner has the full weight of government seeking to enforce their right to housing, and profit.

Renters live under a patchwork of protections. The most formal tenants have legislated contracts, though with significant scope for customisation and therefore uncertainty and informality. There are some penalties where landlords fail to comply with the terms of the Act, but these are practically never applied.

So while landlords retain the weight of government to enact evictions and recover money, the vast majority of enforcement of the Act by tenants is by tenants. And where they do seek to enforce rights, they are subject to eviction, whether actual or the merely the possibility, in retaliation. The only real moderator of behaviour is the market - the risk of vacancy. An unreliable mechanism to be sure.

This is the best case scenario. Once you leave the Residential Tenancies Act, you may be covered by the Boarding Houses Act. You may be covered by the Australian Consumer Law if your landlord is considered to be in business. You may be covered with very little protection by the Landlord and Tenant Act of 1899. A very small number are still in rent-controlled premises under the amendment in 1948. But many, even tens of thousands are covered by no legislative scheme at all.

But should we simply seek to formalise?

Many of you would be familiar with the Commonwealth Housing Commission quote from the 40s:

“We consider that a dwelling of good standard and equipment is not only the need but the right of every citizen – whether the dwelling is to be rented or purchased, no tenant or purchaser should be exploited for excessive profit.”

We have fallen a long way from the promises of those early housing policies, as imperfect as they might have been. But I wanted to remind us all that much of the work of the CHC was in slum-clearances. This was absolutely the informal housing of its time and it is striking the similarities to much of the informal housing we’re seeing today and I know will be in some of the upcoming presentations.

Public housing at arguably its peak was often built on formalising the informal. While we might say it was necessary because of the conditions of that informal housing, we also should acknowledge that sometimes the people living in the slums weren’t able to access the public housing that replaced it because it was too expensive. Formalising the informal does not always achieve what we might assume.

There’s a few more examples I’d like to touch on in this vein.

A few years ago, if you wanted to travel the world on the cheap you could do a hostel or if you knew people in the area you might be able to couchsurf. Famously, that is the origin story of Airbnb. We are watching as it evolves from an informal activity to commercial and now becoming embedded in the legal system.

Over the last 25-30 years we’ve seen community housing groups evolved from local activists and social workers responding to community needs (and government neglect) to bureaucracies embedded very much in the formal structures, utilising heavy-handed state powers to manage their tenancies and gradually losing the local, responsive nature which was the basis for many people’s support for growing the sector.

Share-housing, what some may argue is the highest form of informal housing in Australia at least, where people report forming lasting friendships and de-facto families as they step in to adulthood, is also becoming commercialised through companies like Cocoon turning the sharehouse life into a curated experience - for a price.

Boarding houses, another long-standing sector which floats between the edges of formal and informal housing, is transforming - real estate agents increasingly manage who enters the house blocking some people who have relied on the sector for years. Emerging models like the micro-apartments known as new-gen boarding houses, build-to-rent, iglu, urbanest, all arguably take different features of boarding houses at different times in their history and seek to formalise them.

But we still have a problem - so how do we address it? I’d suggest that what was missing in 1940s, and is still missing now, in all the housing types I’ve mentioned is centring the needs and desires of people living in these homes. More than infrastructure, housing is an essential service. Like water, electricity, government has an obligation to ensure housing gets to people where, when and how they need it.

Like water, if we do not get the supply of housing right, it will get to people in uncontrolled ways, providing too much to some and preventing others from getting enough. Along the way, some of it might get tainted and become unhealthy, unsafe. There will always be luxury water, sold in little bottles. But if we ensure cheap tap water continues to flow then those who need it will never go thirsty.

Opportunity Pathways trial - what you need to know

On Friday, Family and Community Services Minister Pru Goward was widely reported - initially via the The Daily Telegraph - as announcing a new program aimed at incentivising applicants and tenants in public housing to get a job. Goward’s framing of the new program – or at least her framing as reported via the Telegraph – suggests the requirements could apply to all tenants. The Daily Telegraph headline reading: “Want a house? Get a Job. Public housing tenants face tougher employment rules”.

If you read through for the detail it turns out what they are reporting on is a trial aspect of part of the broader Opportunity Pathways program about to be rolled out across NSW.

The trial will involve 20 properties in Punchbowl and Towradgi (in the Illawarra region). Applicants who ‘opt in’ for the trial will have their applications for housing moved through the priority waiting list (‘bumped up the queue’) and will get housed quicker. In return the applicants will be required to engage in education and/or job seeking requirements. Without further detail we're presuming these requirements might look similar to Centrelink’s ‘mutual obligation’ requirements with supports – such as connection to jobs or study, help writing resumes and interview technique tips - provided through a tendered external provider engaged specifically to deliver the Opportunity Pathways program.

Under the trial tenancies will only be 6 months in length. At the end of the 6 months the tenant’s engagement will be assessed. If they are no longer ‘engaging’ as required and haven’t met agreed goals they will be ‘assisted’ out of public housing. If they have found and maintained a job they will be moved into community housing or into the private rental market. So kicked out either way it seems … or in the Minister’s words "increase the number of tenants positively exiting the social housing system".

So much stick, but where’s the carrot?

We're very interested to see what forms of assistance are provided to tenants evicted at the end of 6 months because they didn't meet agreed ‘goals’ to ensure they find alternative housing, i.e. ensure they're not kicked out straight into homelessness. And given the current private rental market what assistance will be provided to tenants evicted after 6 months for finding and keeping a new job to ensure they're not moving immediately into ‘rental stress’.

TL;DR
The Opportunity Pathways program is a trial involving 20 properties in Punchbowl and Towradgi over the next 3 years.
The program is ‘opt in’. Applicants that ‘opt in’ will be provided earlier access to housing but will have to agree to undertake education and employment requirements of program.
If ‘successful’ the program may be rolled out to other areas across the state (note: this does not mean that the program would apply to all tenants, would like remain ‘opt in’ if expanded to other areas).

Some follow up questions we asked FACS and their answers:

• When will the trial begin? 

FACS response: The Opportunity Pathways trial will commence from February 2019 and run for three years.

• How will applicants access the trial? We understand that people will come from the waiting list - will applicants be approached en masse or individually. 

FACS response: Applicants on the Housing Register who may meet eligibility for the trial will be approached individually to be informed about the trial, to assess their suitability and gauge their interest in participating.  The program is completely voluntary and should an applicant not wish to participate, this will not affect their status on the register or future offers.

• How will they be assessed for suitability for the program? That is, will there be some assessment for likelihood of success to avoid people agreeing to terms which are inappropriate for them.   

FACS response: Yes, participants will be assessed for likelihood of success. Suitability assessment will include their willingness and capacity to engage in education, training and employment goals.

• What will be the eligibility criteria at review (at end of what we understand to be a 6 month tenancy agreement)?
  - i.e. on what basis can a tenancy agreement be terminated rather than extended? 

FACS response: Lease renewals are subject to continuing engagement in education, training and employment goals.

• If becomes apparent that tenant is meeting all requirements of program but nonetheless continues to be eligible for social housing at review what will future agreement/social housing tenancy look like? - i.e. will there be a possibility of shifting to longer tenancy agreement (2, 5, 10 year agreements) and/or removal of 'special requirements' of program (in situations where tenant's circs change and requirements deemed no longer appropriate). 

FACS response: The trial provides six month leases that can be extended up to a maximum of three years. Eligibility of participants for further housing assistance at the end of the period will be subject to their circumstances.

• Would this require relocation?

FACS response: See prior answer above.

There is a future briefing mid December. We'll keep you up to date on any further details about the Program we are able to share.

We're keen, for example, to know more about what will be considered measures of 'success' for the trial. Will FACS be tracking all applicants and tenants who take part in the program once they are evicted to find out their housing outcomes over the full duration of the trial? Though not consulted before the announcement of the program, we're hoping that FACS sensibly consults with the housing and homelessness sector as part of its evaluation!

Note: Post was edited 13 December to add in responses provided by FACS regarding the Opportunity Pathways trial.

A longer lease on life: issues for older renters

With a surplus of $3.9 billion for 2016-17, the 2018 NSW State Budget had its winners and losers. The latter include seniors and renters. This blog examine some of the issues confronting older renters.

How does one define 'older person'. There is a helpful discussion of the definition of 'age' in the Australian Law Reform Commission's Discussion Paper on 'Elder Abuse'. Paragraphs [1.33] and [1.36] read:

The idea of someone being an ‘older’ person is a relative concept — chronologically, medically and culturally. It does not have a precise definition and specific ages may be used for particular purposes. For example, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) groups people into population age cohorts, and differentiates between ‘15 – 64’, ‘65 years and over’ and ‘85 years and over’. People over 65 are generally classified as ‘older’ for ABS purposes.

Family and Community Services’ NSW Ageing Strategy 2016-2020 (pp 26-28) identifies older people’s ability to live in affordable, accessible, adaptable and stable housing as a priority of the NSW Government. It asserts:

... older people increasingly prefer to ‘age in place’ and grow older in their own communities – close to friends, family and services.

The NSW Government does not have an explicit ‘ageing-in-place’ policy. Certainly, it would be worthwhile implementing an explicit policy and, further, establish benchmarks against which wider Government policies can be measured regarding consistency. The value of this will become obvious further into this blog.

Nevertheless, a number of significant documents commissioned as part of the NSW Ageing Strategy refer to it, where a basic principle underlying it being that older people know what is best for their own lives and have the right to make decisions on their own behalf. An ‘ageing-in-place’ friendly policy provides the incentives for individuals to remain living in a community to which they have a strong attachment, either in their existing residence or alternate accommodation, with service supports.

Dire circumstances

Alan Morris’s book entitled The Australian Dream: Housing Experiences of Older Australians draws on the stories of 125 Australian pensioners and compares their experiences with the trends and needs of an ageing Australia. He probes the growing divide between older private renters, those who live in social housing and pensioners living in their own home. Here's an excerpt about private renting:

It's like a pressure cooker. You don't know where to go or what to do.' ... 'It was so desperate, the search for affordable accommodation, that I went down with a heart thing and was rushed to hospital.

On 26 October 2016, quoting from Alan Morris's publication, Jennifer Duke says that at least 100,000 older Australians in the private rental sector are living in 'dire circumstances' ... and this figure is expected to grow substantially if current policies and approaches to housing affordability aren’t changed.

On 12 December 2016, Alan Morris penned an article for The Conversation entitled ‘Why secure and affordable housing is an increasing worry for age pensioners’. He writes:

An increasing proportion of older Australians on the age pension will be dependent on the private rental sector in coming decades ... and the prospects for this group are grim.

An increasing number of older women in the private rental market face homelessness and have been described as ‘the new face of poverty. Read an article called ‘Older renters: the new face of poverty’. It reads:

The evidence mounts. The number of older, single women in the private rental market increased by a massive 50 percent between the 2006 and 2011 ABS Censuses.

The private rental sector across Australia has grown in size and significance in the last 30 years. Between 2001 and 2010 about 1.7 million Australians dropped out of home ownership and shifted back to renting. More than one in three did not return by 2010.

Private rental now provides long term tenancy for a growing and diverse number of Australian households. If large numbers of long term renters aged 45-64 years remain in the rental sector, they could swell the number of long-term private renters aged 65 years and above quite substantially in the coming decades.

Many older women experiencing a housing crisis or homelessness have led conventional lives and never previously had a housing crisis. As private renters, especially in tight housing markets like Sydney and some regional centres, they are at great risk of unaffordable rents, insecure housing, eviction and homelessness.

Also, an excellent essay by Anwen Crawford picks up this same theme. She writes about 'Nowhere to go – older women and housing vulnerability’ and finds:

The number of older women who are rental tenants in Australia is growing, and these women ... are increasingly vulnerable to poverty and homelessness ... Housing affordability and security for rental tenants will only become a more pressing issue as Australia’s population continues to age. And with more people unable to afford to buy a home, changes to housing policy now will help to determine the living conditions of tenants in the future.

2016 Census

The 2016 Census found a significant increase in the number of people renting in New South Wales. Indeed, there was a slight shift away from home ownership towards renting. There were 826,922 renter households at the 2016 Census, which was 83,870 more than there were in 2011. To put this into context, that's almost double the increase we saw between 2006 and 2011. It also means our renting population has gone up in percentage terms since 2011, too - from 30.1% to 31.8% in 2016. It also means that more people are renting for longer. Read more here. On top of this, Australia’s population is ageing. Those aged 65 years and over now account for 16% of the total population, compared to 14% in 2011. The median age has increased to 38 years, after remaining at 37 years for the past decade. Read more here.

Following the release of the 2016 Census, there have been a number of reports highlighting the problems of life-long renters.

In March 2017, The New Daily examined the most recent population statistics. Australia is ageing and life expectancy is greater. The stats show that from 2012 to 2016, the proportion of the Australian population aged 65 and over increased from 14.14 to 15.27 per cent.

Kirsten Robb writes: 'Life-long renters face financial stress in retirement'... according to a paper by Swinburne University, which found more Australians are renting in retirement and facing financial stress. The report that she refers to is one by Andrea Sharam, Liss Ralston and Sharon Parkinson of Swinburne Institute for Social Research. They found:

The proportion of aged persons in Australia is set to increase significantly, posing many challenges. Amongst these is the growing number of households who lack housing security in retirement. ... Our findings indicate that social change, and adverse ‘critical life events’ have significant impacts on households by and at midlife, and beyond. Of particular concern is that the housing market itself is a key source of wealth accumulation and dispossession. A very marked outcome is that to be private renter at 45 years of age is likely to mean being a renter and highly impoverished, in retirement.

Teresa Somes of Macquarie University writes for The Conversation: 'More and more older Australians will be homeless unless we act now.'

Eileen Webb and Gill North write: 'Suitable, affordable housing is key to our population ageing well'.

Ben Phillips of the Australian National University writes for The Conversation:

... the more pressing social problem for Australia remains the lack of affordable rental housing for lower-income families that is close to jobs and services in our capital cities. ... An ageing population with potentially lower home ownership rates will add to this problem in future years.

And Ned Cutcher of Shelter NSW writes that more people are renting much later into life.

More recent media

You will find recent media coverage, reports and publications on older renters in this document.


What is the reality for older renters?

Various words have been used to described the plight of older renters: Overlooked, A distinct financial disadvantage, Condemned, Vulnerable and Financial stress … and that’s just for starters.

As discussed above, there are many issues confronting older renters. So here's my summary:

• Shortage of affordable housing in well serviced locations. True for all renters, but compounded if you are older ... Check out Anglicare’s annual rental affordability snapshot ... and National Shelter’s Rental Affordability Index, published in May 2018.

• Weak security of tenure. True for all renters, but compounded if you are older ... check out Choice’s publication entitled ‘Unsettled’. Read about it and find a link here. Also, check out the ‘Make renting fair’ campaign. Indeed, Australia fairs poorly in an international comparison of security of tenure for renters.

• Only token acknowledgement of ‘ageing in place’ ... The redevelopment of old public housing estates poses real hardships for many older tenants. The forced relocation of residents of Millers Point in inner Sydney highlights the failings of Government when only lip service is given to ‘ageing-in-place’. Read the blog in The Brown Couch here. In 2015 and 2017 the Tenants' Union of NSW made submissions to Elder Abuse Inquiries of both the NSW Legislative Council and the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) here and here. We argued that a government policy, in itself, may constitute a form of elder abuse. We submitted that the NSW Government’s decision to relocate all the social housing tenants in the suburb of Millers Point is an example of systemic elder abuse.

• Restricted access to home modifications ... private landlords have little incentive to modify properties to suit the needs of older tenants. Older renters are forced to move as dwellings are no longer appropriate to their needs and residential tenancy legislation fails to adequately address this. Here’s the current state of play.

• Residential land lease communities (also called ‘residential parks’) as an alternative for older people ... Today business is viewing residential parks as money-making ventures, with some being promoted as an alternative to retirement villages. But, homes in residential parks, once seen as a cheaper option, now are regularly sold for amounts over $300,000. Indeed in 2016, two on the North Coast of NSW sold for over $1 million. Residents may own their home, but they do not own the land and remain vulnerable should the park be sold from under them.

• Pets is an issue with particular meaning for older tenants. Check out this site. Recently, there has been increased media coverage of this issue in Australia. Read Wendy Squires’ article called 'Landlords, have a heart and let your tenants have a pet'. The Tenants Union of NSW wants to see the decision to keep pets to sit with the tenants rather than the owners.

What can we do?

For an excellent discussion on what to do in order to address the more dire needs of older renters, check out the 'Ageing on the Edge’ report released on 29 November 2017. It contains thirteen recommendations that the NSW Government can act on now. The Tenants’ Union of NSW is represented on the ‘Ageing at the Edge’ Working Group in NSW. You will find a summary of the report here and the full report here.

Postscript on 26 July 2018

Here's three new links which are food for thought ...

Allison Worrall writes: 'Choice of food or rent: Housing crisis deepens.' Read her article here.

Isabelle Lane writes: 'Older Australians are falling off the housing ladder and face spending their retirement as renters, with the situation expected to worsen for coming generations.' Read her article here. You may check out Grattan Retirement Incomes Model (GRIM) here.

AHURI provides an excellent analysis of the situation facing older low income tenants in the private rental sector. This link also points to some current research. Check it out here.

The numbers near the end of the Millers Point struggle: 28, 42 and 200 million

Backyards in Kent Street, Millers Point: Mrs Mac feeding cats, washing blowing on the line, 1985 © Susan Dorothea White

Our title juxtapositions the numbers 28, 42 and 200 million! What is the significance of these numbers? Well, these are the end days of the Millers Point struggle and, in a recent article, Patrick Begley (The Sydney Morning Herald, 11 June 2018, p1) headlines his electronic copy: 'Sally has 28 days to leave her home of 42 years.' But he uses a different heading in the hard copy: '$200m bonus from Millers Point sale'. Let's tell the stories behind these numbers.

28 and 42

In March 2014, the NSW Government decided to evict all the social housing tenants in Millers Point and the Sirius building in The Rocks. To date, 578 tenant and household members in 398 tenancies have been forced to vacate their homes, with one lone surviving tenant. On 7 June 2018, the Supreme Court ordered this tenant, Ms Sally Parslow, to vacate her home within 28 days (by 5 July 2018). Having rejected Ms Parslow's claim to a life tenancy on her home, Justice Guy Parker found that he had no option but to give her only 28 days to vacate her home. (See Paragraphs 203 to 207 of his published decision.)

The time period of 28 days is a by-product of the Government's anti-social behaviour legislation. The short time period is due to the operation of s154G of the Residential Tenancies Act 2010. This section was an amendment which formed part of the Residential Tenancies and Social Housing Legislation Amendment (Public Housing - Antisocial Behaviour) Act 2015, but it flows on to all social housing (including community housing) tenants before a court or Tribunal, even though their eviction has nothing to do with anti-social behaviour. This section requires a possession order to take effect in 'no more than 28 days', unless there are 'exceptional circumstances justifying a later day'. At law, the words 'exceptional circumstances' have a very high bar. This phrase occurs nowhere else in the Residential Tenancies Act 2010 nor its Regulations. It is most commonly used in criminal law matters.

The home had been Sally's for 42 years but speaks to the much longer history of the area and property Sally lives in and others in the area. The judgment describes the history in some detail, and is worth reading. Briefly, the home had been built between the 1840s and 1860s as accommodation for wharf workers. At the turn of the 20th century the government acquired the properties and for nearly a century, first under the Sydney Harbour Trust and later the Maritime Services Board, there were 60 boarding houses run as commercial enterprises. People like Sally used the premises as their home, but also took on both management and risk of running the business. Here's the story told by one daughter of Millers Point. The cost of building the premises never touched the government purse, and even maintaining the premises was with the resident boarding house operators like Sally until 1985.

$200 million

At today's date, there had been 180 sales raising $570.7 million, plus stamp duty of $30.8 million. You can check these sales here. In keeping with requirements outlined in the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009, NSW Property keeps a record of all contracts, including property sales over $150,000 in a Property NSW Contracts Register. These are published and details must remain on the register for 20 working days, or until the contract is complete, whichever is longer. Go to here and click 'PNSW - Government Contracts Register'.

Altogether, 26 properties are still to be sold. 16 properties (comprising 4 sales) in High Street are currently on the market. A further 2 properties in Lower Fort Street are yet to be placed on the market. 8 properties (comprising 2 sales) in Dalgety Road apparently have been withdrawn from sale. The Sydney Morning Herald article refers to 'a final 11 lots are due to be sold this year, including the historic apartment building Sirius'.

In November 2015, the then Minister for Social Housing, Brad Hazzard, set aside 28 properties for remaining tenants and household members.  By late February of this year, 21 were occupied by 19 tenancies. Of the remaining 7 units, 1 is on hold and 6 remain unallocated. The Government will receive a big thank-you if it gives some of the previous residents, who were relocated but now isolated and lonely, the option of taking up the unallocated units.

But Millers Point has changed forever 'from struggle street to billionaire’s row'. You can read the promotions for the 'Workmen's Dwellings', one of the refurbished block of apartments, here (Domain: New Living, The Sydney Morning Herald, 18-19 May 2018 pp 14-15).

A conservative estimate of the total funds from sales to date (which excludes the Sirius building and 28 units where sales have been deferred) is $596 million. The real estate industry estimates $120m plus from the sale of the Sirius building. This provides an estimate, all round, of $716 million. Patrick Begley writes:

When the government announced in 2014 it would sell off social housing in inner-city Sydney, it predicted sales of about half a billion dollars. But Justice Guy Parker, summarising evidence from two [NSW Land and] Housing Corporation witnesses, found "the revised estimate is that $700 million will ultimately be received."

(This quote comes from Paragraph 145 of the published decision.)

You can check an update of FACS Housing webpage for how the proceeds have been spent. We previously wrote an article about delving behind the figures for new social housing dwellings here. Hal Pawson from the City Future's Research Centre at the University of NSW provides a critique, arguing that Housing NSW is overselling its social housing commitment. You can read his analysis here. He concludes:

Thanks to the property boom of the past few years, government has enjoyed a massive revenue bonanza through stamp duty income ... the actual stamp duty income recorded in recent years has amounted to a windfall of no less than $18.25 billion in excess of that “counter factual” revenue. And yet none of this booty has been channelled into expanding social and affordable provision ...

Returning to the title of this article. The Supreme Court gives the sole surviving tenant of Millers Point 28 days to vacate, after 42 years in her home and the Government stands to exceed its expected takings by $200 million. Millers Point changes forever. New social housing dwellings are being built using these monies, but in nearly all cases, they are not close-by. None of the Government's bonanza from stamp duty income has been channelled into expanding the provision of social and affordable housing.

Thankyou to Susan White for kindly allowing us to use her watercolour and pen print called 'Backyards in Kent Street, Millers Point: Mrs Mac feeding cats,washing blowing on the line'. 

FACS: Alternative waiting list figure

On 20 March 2018 NSW Family and Community Services (FACS) Housing placed on their website updated information about waiting lists, which is now current to 30 June 2017.

They call it the 'Social Housing Expected Waiting Times dashboard' and the link is here.

The dashboard does not show historical figures, but the Productivity Commission's Report on Government Services shows the waiting list at 30 June 2017 across New South Wales has dropped significantly.

Source: Steering Committee for the Review of Government Service Provision, 'Report on government services 2018', Productivity Commission, 23/1/18, Table 18A.5. Figures for 2012 to 2012 from previous reports. (You can view Table 18A.5 here.) This data excludes people who have applied for community housing only. Most applicants in NSW may be offered either community housing or public housing.

This news is too good to be true. As mentioned in our blog here, figures for 30 June 2017 exclude 'suspended applicants'. Suspended applicants won't be offered properties during suspension, but unlike closed applications, if their suspension ends their waiting time will be counted from the original registration of their application.

One way of thinking of the difference is that suspended applicants are assumed to want and be eligible for social housing, but there is currently a reason not to offer them a property. Closed applicants are assumed not to want or be eligible for public housing. For more detail see the 'Managing the NSW Housing Register Policy' page.

FACS Housing's dashboard has separated out 'General' and 'Priority' applications and also has made a notation that their figure for 30 June 2017 excludes 'suspended' applications and, accordingly, 'this data is not strictly comparable to published data in previous years'. Check here.

FACS Housing kindly has supplied the number of suspended applications at 30 June 2017. These stand at 5,499.

So, the total number of applicants on the waiting list at 30 June 2017 arising out of the additional information supplied by FACS Housing = 'General' + 'Priority' + 'Suspended' = 51,453 + 4,496 + 5,499 = 61,448.

The alternative waiting list figure at 30 June 2017 is 61,448.

We now are able to compare waiting list figures from previous years.

Sources: For Productivity Commission data, see foot of previous histogram. For FACS Housing data for 30 June 2017, check here and for 30 June 2016, check here. For figures for 30 June 2012 to 30 June 2015, check similar links to the last one. The 2017 figures shown above for both agencies include the 5,499 suspended applications. We have added these because suspended applications were included in previous years.

There has been a steady increase in waiting list numbers over the last five years. Indeed, FACS Housing's waiting list figures show an increase of just over 10 per cent in this period. This does not bode well for the future. Check out Nigel Gladstone’s recent article in The Sydney Morning Herald here on why more people are joining a decade-long wait for public housing in a queue that stretches past 55,000 people ... we say past 60,000 people.

Postscript

It is unclear why the waiting list figures published in Table 18A.5 of the Productivity Commission's Report on Government Services (51,571) and those now published by FACS Housing (55,949) vary. Both exclude the number of suspended applications and both come from the same original source. Indeed, this has been the story for the last few years, although not so pronounced.

Further notations in Note (d) of Table 18A.5 here may tell some of the story:

- waitlist data should be used with caution as over counting may stem from the use of a single integrated social housing waiting list (since 2010) for public housing and SOMIH (which includes those who have also applied for community housing, but not applicants for community housing only).

- fewer waitlist applications were closed in 2015-16 because a review and redesign of the annual Housing Eligibility Review (HER) process delayed its completion until 2016-17. Data for 2016-17 may not be comparable to 2015-16 due to outstanding data remediation at that time.

Making sense of social housing in NSW

Social housing operates within a complex glob of morphing policies and procedures, prodded by occasional shifts in public policy at both a state and federal level that draw various laws, instruments and agreements into contact with one another in a range of ways. A sound working knowledge of the sector in its entirety can take years to develop, and once established could fall apart within an instant should one glance away at precisely the wrong moment.

A case in point is last year's announcement that the management of large swathes of tenanted public housing properties will be transferred to community housing landlords in New South Wales, in keeping with the Council of Australian Governments' (COAG) National Affordable Housing Agreement (NAHA), which was negotiated during the early days of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Government era. The announcement of the Management Transfer Program sparked some discussion here on the Brown Couch, and across the broader sector, about just who these community housing landlords are. How do they come to be in the business of housing people from the public housing waiting list since they're not run by the Government of NSW?

The plot thickens, as the results of the Program's tendering process have now been announced. Over the next couple of years, management of around 14,000 tenanted public housing properties across six different regions is to be handed to nine community housing landlords who are already operating in other parts of the state. So... now is a good time to take a look at what it means to be a "social housing" landlord in New South Wales.

Given we've already mentioned the NAHA, we should note it is the intergovernmental agreement that determines who takes responsibility for what within our housing systems across Australia. As an agreement among the Commonwealth, state and territory governments it is a static document, although it is intended to be renegotiated and updated from time to time. It has been altered quite a bit since its series of predecessors first took form: established in the 1940's as the "Commonwealth State Housing Agreements" as something of a post-war nation building scheme; and it is currently being renegotiated as a "National Housing and Homelessness Agreement".

Regardless of form, or name, these agreements have generally all set out to achieve the same objective: to set the conditions under which the Commonwealth would give funding to the states to run their public housing schemes. These agreements have been broad enough to allow each state and territory to run their housing programs as they see fit, as indeed they do. A strong focus of the current agreement has been to shift the delivery of housing assistance and services away from government to the not-for-profit sector, and successive NSW Governments have responded - indeed contributed - by attempting to consolidate and build our community housing sector. Notably, this included the regulation of the sector in 2010, with a state based scheme that has since been replaced by the National Regulatory System for Community Housing. It also included the establishment of a single waiting list for housing assistance, accessible through a portal known as Housing Pathways, under which any participating landlord could both process applications for and make offers of subsidised rental housing to eligible households.

In this context our language and legislation has come to reflect the idea of "social housing". With this term we could be referencing either or both of its constituent parts: "public housing" or "community housing"; and for practical purposes the only difference is whether the landlord is the government or a not-for-profit agency who has been contracted by government to provide the same essential service. Of course, things become more complicated when we consider the public policy implications of this rhetorical shift, as it gives our still predominantly neoliberal governments easy cover to withdraw from the direct provision of public housing proper, and focus entirely on the setting of policy instead. They do this on the grounds that "community housing landlords are well placed and can do it better", although this is far from an established truth. While we can have no objection to the growth of this community housing sector, the fact that it only ever seems to happen at the expense of our established public housing provider is a simple reflection of the State's entrenched reluctance to pay for and provide social housing. Given the sector has spent the better part of a decade trying to attract private finance to its cause, it reflects a certain level of disinterest in housing-as-shelter from the profit-driven private sector as well - as an aside, it will be interesting to watch how the emerging "build-to-rent" discussion proceeds from here.

Right - so while all of that is going on at the higher level, there is a somewhat consistent legal framework setting the scene in the meantime for social housing landlords and tenants across New South Wales. Although with the right political will the statutes under which social housing policies are determined can be changed - as we have seen throughout the last couple of years with mandatory evictions for social housing tenants and the introduction of concurrent leasing by the Land & Housing Corporation to enable the current Management Transfer Program - keeping tabs on the legislative framework can be a useful way to maintain one's bearings while trying to make sense of social housing.

The Residential Tenancies Act 2010 devotes an entire Part to social housing tenancy agreements, a discrete form of residential tenancy agreement to which a number of additional provisions apply. This Act defines a social housing tenancy agreement as "a residential tenancy agreement where the landlord is a social housing provider", and then defines a social housing provider as:

• the New South Wales Land & Housing Corporation
• the Aboriginal Housing Office
• a registered community housing provider within the meaning of the Community Housing Providers National Law (NSW)
• an organisation for the time being registered under Part 5 of the Aboriginal Housing Act 1998
• an organisation or a member of a class of organisation prescribed by the regulations

This immediately brings a number of other statutes into play. There's the Housing Act 2001, under which the Land & Housing Corporation is established as the legal entity that enters into residential tenancy agreements and other related dealings in residential property on behalf of the government; and under which the income based rental subsidy scheme is established. This is the legislation that gives us public housing, and it is amendments to this legislation that has enabled the emergence and establishment of community housing over many years.

There's the Community Housing Providers (Adoption of National Law) Act 2012, under which regulation of the community housing sector is provided by adoption of the Community Housing Providers National Law. This Act brings New South Wales into the National Regulatory System for Community Housing and, in some circumstances, allows the government to conditionally transfer title from the Land & Housing Corporation to a registered community housing provider. Note this has fallen out of fashion as concurrent leasing has come into play, having been made available by amendment to the Housing Act in 2016. For the time being property is being transferred to the community housing sector using this form of head-lease, but transfer of title under the Community Housing Providers (Adoption of National Law) Act remains an option.

Finally there's the Aboriginal Housing Act 1998, under which the Aboriginal Housing Office is established along similar lines to the Land & Housing Corporation, but with a specific remit to develop policy and deliver subsidised housing for Aboriginal households who rent. This Act also allows regulation of a broader Aboriginal Community Housing sector, for whom the National Regulatory Scheme for Community Housing is also being brought into play. By association, we must mention the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1983, under which Local Aboriginal Land Councils who provide rental housing to their members may register with the Aboriginal Housing Office or the National Regulatory Scheme for Community Housing in order to have the requirements for approval to run a community benefits scheme that includes the provision of residential accommodation to their members waived by the NSW Aboriginal Lands Council.

The policy framework in which social housing operates is likely to keep changing, and where required legislative changes will sometimes follow. But for now, the above provides an overview of social housing in New South Wales. We'll keep an eye on the development of the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement, and take further note of any impact it might make.

In the meantime we'll do our best to answer any questions left in the comments, or sent through to us via the usual channels.