Proposed Redfern public housing criminal record ban won't work

The Daily Telegraph reports today that police have proposed to the NSW State Government that applicants for social housing should be banned from being allocated tenancies in Redfern and Waterloo if they've been previously convicted of drug offences.

Redfern Local Area Command Superintendent Luke Freudenstein is quoted:

'I know everyone's got to have a place to live... but they're going back into an environment where they fall back into bad habits and it's not doing justice for their rehabilitation.'

For that very reason, we think the proposal should be rejected, because it won't work.

As the Superintendent says, everyone's got to have a place to live. If you make a person ineligible for a sizeable part of the social housing system in Sydney, they will have wait longer for another offer of social housing... and while they wait, they'll still got to live somewhere. Most likely, they'll be transient, moving between family, friends and associates. There's every prospect that they'll be back in same environment, at risk of the same 'bad habits', but they'll be there as a transient homeless person.

Research by Eileen Baldry and her colleagues at UNSW shows that for people leaving prison, having only transient accommodation is one of the strongest risk factors for their being imprisoned again. They conclude:

Chaotic living arrangements made doing anything about drug rehabilitation, employment or social connections virtually impossible for the study participants [ie ex-prisoners]. A majority of these transient participants was re-incarcerated by nine months post-release.

To do justice for rehabilitation of ex-drug offenders, the State Government should focus on providing secure housing and helpful support, not denying both.  

Some thoughts on mutual obligation

In an interesting follow-on from our recent discussion on underemployment and housing insecurity, The Monthly magazine has published an excellent article about Australia's contradictory approach to mutual obligation for welfare recipients. It's recommended reading on the Brown Couch - you can find the online version of the article at this link here. It's a long read, but it really is worth giving it some time over the weekend.

Much obliged

In a nutshell, the article explores our expectations of those who receive government assistance at each extreme of the welfare spectrum - individuals receiving some level of income support at one end, and multinational corporations structured for maximum (sanctioned) tax avoidance at the other.

Somewhere along that spectrum - towards the end where tax avoidance happens - we might also add landlords. Landlords who lost nearly $1.2billion in a single year, as part of their tax avoidance strategies. Landlords who have been wearing these losses in exchange for eye-watering capital gains. Landlords who will tell you that they'll stop investing in housing if you even hint at making life a little bit better for tenants...

The social responsibility that comes with being a landlord is something we've occasionally talked about here on the Brown Couch. We think it's far too easily overlooked. It's worth keeping that in mind, as you're scrolling through The Monthly's article this weekend.

Go on - give it a read.

Underemployment and housing insecurity

We were recently discussing unemployment and underemployment, and the awful waste it represents. Not having adequate work also represents a threat to a person's housing, and some new AHURI research puts some numbers on this.

The research focuses on underemployment (that is, where a person is employed less than full-time, and would prefer to work more hours) and notable findings include:

• Of households comprising a single earner who is underemployed, almost half (48.2 per cent) are in private rental (by contrast, 25.6 per cent of all households are in private rental). Of these households:
• 28 per cent fell into rent arrears sometime in the previous year (by contrast, 16.8 per cent of adequately employed single earners had been in arrears);
• 37.1 per cent were 'at risk' of arrears (by contrast, 13.9 per cent of adequately employed single earners were at risk)*;
• 48.9 per cent had difficulty paying other bills in the previous year (by contrast, 31 per cent of adequately employed single earners had difficulty);
• and the median rent paid by these households increased in real terms by 14 per cent over the period 2001-2009 (contrast the real increase of 17.5 per cent paid by adequately employed single earners). 

• Of households comprising multiple earners, at least one of whom is underemployed, 28.3 per cent are in private rental. Of these households:

•  22.6 per cent fell into rent arrears sometime in the previous year (by contrast, 11.6 per cent of adequately employed multiple earner households had been in arrears);
• 16.2 per cent were 'at risk' of arrears (by contrast, eight per cent of adequately employed multiple earner households were at risk);
• 37.9 per cent had difficulty paying other bills in the previous year (by contrast, 22.3 per cent of adequately employed multiple earner households had difficulty);
• and the median rent paid by these households increased in real terms by an awful 54.7 per cent over the period 2001-2009 (contrast the real increase of 26.48 per cent paid by adequately employed multiple earner households)

The researchers also find that underemployment is 'scarring': the odds of an adequately employed person being 'at risk' of arrears are 1.4 times higher if they were underemployed the previous year.

Turning the numbers around, we also find that of private renter households with members in the labour force (counting together multiple earners and single earners):

• 76.35 per cent have all members adequately employed;
• 13.95 per cent have at least one member underemployed;
• 8.7 per cent have at least one member unemployed.

  

* Assessed 'at risk' because they reported they were paying more than 30 per cent of income in rent, would have 'extreme difficulty in raising $2000-$3000 at a time of need, and described themselves as 'just getting by', 'poor' or 'very poor'. 

Tenancy Culture Studies: I'm interested in apathy

The Institute of Tenancy Culture Studies returns with a quick look at TISM's song "I'm interested in apathy". There's a clever irony in the title (perhaps you spotted it?) which really gives us something to think about.

In a couple of recent-ish articles about Australia's housing system, and the way it leaves first home buyers (aka tenants) behind, economist Saul Eslake has said:

"I'm surprised there isn't more anger among young people about the way in which the housing system has been rigged against them by their parents" (SMH 5/4/14)

and

"In some ways I'm surprised there isn't more anger among young people about how the housing market has advantaged older people" (AFR 27/9/14)

It's something that occurs to us as well. But are we really as relaxed and comfortable as all that?

Does Australia's housing system make you angry? Does it make you burn with resentment for those wealthy enough to buy, or at least canny enough to buy before it became impossible? Are you merely resigned to a new reality, where owning a home is little more than an aspirational flight-of-fancy for people on extravagant incomes?

Or are you simply not concerned?

In a survey we conducted earlier in the year, we asked tenants in New South Wales to tell us why they rent. 57% of our respondents said it was because they couldn't afford to buy. By comparison, 15% said they were happy to rent because it was cheaper than buying where they wanted to live.

We also asked tenants if they were satisfied with their current housing, and 68% said they were. In the same survey, 92% said they'd worry about finding another place to rent if the landlord asked them to move.

... and worry they should. Because in New South Wales your landlord can ask you to move without giving you any reason at all.

And if that doesn't make you just a little bit angry, then we don't know what will.

Real waste

The NSW State Finance Minister, Dominic Perrottet, recently wrote an article on government finances and government 'waste'. The Minister notes all manner of waste – CBD heritage buildings used as government offices, government car fleet maintenance, warehouses of paper records – but he misses the most appalling waste over which governments preside.

 (Russell Drysdale, The Deserted Town Hall)

That's the waste of leaving 219 000 persons unemployed (5.7 per cent of the New South Wales labour force) and a further 303 000 persons underemployed (6.2 per cent). Across Australia, 747 000 persons are unemployed, and 1.05 million are underemployed.

That's a big part of our labour resources not working to capacity – and in many instances, simply standing idle. And that's an appalling waste, in terms of the skills and abilities of these people; their aspirations, dignity and sense of worth; and the additional goods and services that they would otherwise have produced and made available to the rest of us.

Indeed, some of them might have the skills and ability to do office fit-outs, maintain cars, digitise paper and solve other problems that frustrate government ministers and their fellow citizens. In the area of our particular interest, some could help build houses, or repair them, or get activities going in local communities to simply make life more interesting and enjoyable.

All this may be had simply by paying them a wage. The private sector isn't doing it and won't – in fact, it can't, where it also wants to accumulate net financial assets (not to mention pay taxes).

Instead, the money to pay wages for jobs for the otherwise unemployed must come from the non-private sector – in particular, the Australian Government, which should embrace its role in eliminating the waste of idle labour by becoming the employer of last resort (or, putting it more positively, operating a Job Guarantee).

In returning for socially useful work, the Government would pay a living wage, which would thereby become the effective minimum wage in the private sector too. It would make for the economy a buffer stock of employed labour, rather than than unemployed labour, and a mechanism for stabilising wages, other prices, and the currency.

And the Australian Government would pay for this by simply crediting the bank accounts of Job Guarantee employees. The total amount spent would depend on the state of the wider economy – in a recession, when the private sector sheds jobs, the program would grow; and when the private sector is growing, rising incomes and wages would draw labour out of the program – but in any event, the amount spent would be the appropriate amount to maintain full employment. And as issuer of the Australian currency, the Australian Government can always afford whatever is for sale in Australian dollars, including unemployed labour.

The Government's role in the elimination of wasteful unemployment is occluded, however, by misconceptions about the Government and money. The Finance Minister perpetuates them when he writes:

the overarching obligation of politicians is to the taxpayers who fund us. Governments do not actually earn, own or generate any money of their own. Our funds only exist because we tax the labor and efforts of our citizens and businesses. They keep their part of the social contract by entrusting us with this money.  We need to keep ours by using it wisely. [Emphasis added.]

This does not reflect the true position of the Australian Government, and it hardly reflects that of the NSW State Government either (which does not issue currency, and which does spend monies raised by taxation, but which is nonetheless part of a federal system that has placed the power to issue currency with the Australian Government and which gets a bit less than half its funds directly from the Australian Government).

Taxpayers do not 'entrust' money to government. They give it up, more or less willing, as part of participating in an economy with a sovereign currency. Government keeps its part of the bargain by using its special role as issuer of the currency to allow all citizens to participate and contribute, through work, to the wealth of the whole community.

Vale Gough Whitlam

Gough Whitlam has died. Whitlam was Prime Minister for two abbreviated terms of government (1972-74 and 1974-75) and the greatest egalitarian reformer to hold that office.

We reviewed the Whitlam Government's achievements in housing and urban policy in our series on the centenary of public housing in New South Wales. It's extracted below.

Whitlam's most ambitious initiative was the creation of a new Department of Urban and Regional Development (DURD), conceived of as 'virtually co-equal with the Treasury', to coordinate the  allocation of urban resources by all levels of government. Under Minister Tom Uren, DURD programs included the establishment of the State land banks (Landcom in New South Wales) to better manage suburban development; funding for suburban sewerage; and the development of Area Improvement Plans that brought together and directly funded local governments to plan and work on local and regional infrastructure.

Early in its first term, the Whitlam Government also negotiated a new Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement (CSHA), which made a few notable changes to public housing policy. Whitlam had gone to the election critical of the recent decline in building activity by State public housing authorities, and promising instead to 'request each State authority to estimate the funds it will require to reduce the waiting period for houses to twelve months.' The 1973 CSHA didn't quite do that (fastforward to the present and see how far waiting lists have run out here), but it increased funding, reined in sales of public housing dwellings, and stabilised the level of construction for a time.

The new CSHA also slightly shifted the target of public housing policy. Traditionally directed at working class households, and exclusive of very poor and vulnerable persons (you could be knocked back by the Housing Commission's allocations committees if you didn't keep your current house well, or had too many children), State housing authorities were henceforth required to make not less than 80 per cent of public housing allocations to households whose incomes were not more than 80 per cent of the average. This attempted to balance responsiveness to households in need with the system's need for higher income households.

Apart from the CSHA, DURD purchased and rehabilitated old dwellings at Glebe and Woolloomooloo for public housing, and demonstrated an alternative approach to redevelopment at a time when the NSW Housing Commission was at the height of its enthusiasm for 'slum clearance' and high-rise construction. The first programs for Aboriginal housing on principles of self-determination were also commenced. And under its Australian Assistance Plan, the Whitlam Government established Regional Councils for Social Development and funded other local, non-profit organisations to employ community development workers and improve the social fabric of public housing estates and other disadvantaged areas.

Finally, the Whitlam Government initiated the first steps towards tenancy law reform, by expanding the scope of the Inquiry into Poverty (originally commissioned by the McMahon Government) to include a report, by Adrian Bradbrook, into the landlord-tenant relationship, which set out the basic model of residential tenancies legislation subsequently enacted by (with considerable differences in the details, and delays in the commencement) by the State and Territory Governments.

No subsequent Federal Government has been so active in housing and urban policy. If you live in or visit a place like Claymore (which we visited recently with IUT Secretary -General Magnus Hammar), where residents and community workers meet around a table in a community laundry to connive at ways of getting and keeping basic facilities and resources like decent houses, footpaths, parks and playgrounds, and the occasional bus-run to shops that don't rip you off, you'll see the continuing relevance of Whitlam's agenda. Both sides of politics should see that it's time for a strong and just housing and urban policy again.

We hope the remembrance of Whitlam today revitalises egalitarian principles in Australian politics and policy.

Vale Gough Whitlam.

Children in rental housing

It's NSW Children's Week 2014, and on Wednesday Australia observes Universal Children's Day. Both are occasions to 'celebrate the right of children to enjoy childhood' and to 'consider those conditions in society which affect the lives and future of our own children.'

About a quarter of all persons living in rental housing in New South Wales are children aged 14 years and younger. The rate is even higher amongst Aboriginal households: about half of all Aboriginal persons living in rental housing are children (14 years and younger).

The NSW State Government promotes NSW Children's Week and Universal Children's Day, and we'd like it to keep in mind how these children may be affected by tenancy laws.

In particular, when the government allows tenancies to be terminated without grounds, on 90 days notice (or just 30 days notice, when at the end of a fixed term), it makes the housing of children needlessly insecure.

And when, as the landlord of the State's 110 000 public housing tenancies, it thinks about 'getting tough' and evicting tenants, it should consider that they are getting tough on vulnerable children too. 

We're thinking in particular of where there's been a 'use of the premises for an illegal purpose' – most often, but not always, drug offences. Housing NSW already undertakes 'illegal use' termination proceedings, including where it means people not involved in the illegality – including kids – may lose their housing. Under the current law, you can at least ask the Tribunal not to terminate, considering the circumstances of the case (eg kids would lose their housing; court has seen fit to order non-custodial sentence; offence not actually committed by tenant), and the Tribunal will make up its own mind. 

We understand, however, that the NSW State Government is currently considering a proposal to change the law in this regard, such that when Housing NSW takes these proceedings, the Tribunal would have no choice but to terminate. This change would produce serious injustice, particularly where children and other blameless persons would be evicted into homelessness.