The same for less, or more to stay the same?

Not to take your mind off the Federal Election that's to be held tomorrow, but if you are a tenant in NSW Public Housing there is another important date that is fast approaching - on Monday, September 9th, HNSW will flick the switch on the new 'better approach to filling vacant bedrooms' policy. We expect to see the full details of this policy on Monday.

UPDATE (9/9/13): HNSW has now produced a 'vacant bedroom charge' factsheet - find it at this link.

This policy has been referred to as a new 'vacant bedroom charge', but you might have also heard it mentioned as the spare bedroom tax. Essentially, it will require tenants with more bedrooms than allowed by their entitlement to make a choice: pay the same for less, or pay more to stay the same.

We've already spoken about this a couple of times on the Brown Couch, and it is worth revisiting those discussions for a refresher about what we already know. You can find these posts here, here and here.

But to summarise, briefly: tenants who have more bedrooms than they're entitled to (based on the policy at this link) may be asked to relocate to smaller premises. If they are asked, and they decline, their rent subsidy will be adjusted so that they pay more. For singles, this will mean a rent increase of about $20 per week; for couples, it will mean a rise of about $30 per week.

If, on the other hand, the tenant chooses to relocate to a smaller premises, they will be placed on the waiting list for a transfer, and will be considered a priority applicant.

Since writing those earlier posts, we have had some further discussions with Housing NSW about how this policy will be implemented. Here's what we have been lead to understand:

1. HNSW has said that it will not be approaching every tenant with spare bedrooms to discuss relocation. There are some tenants who, for one reason or another, will be left alone. HNSW has not given us anything concrete to go on as to who will be exempt and why - other than to say the decision to approach or not approach a tenant will be made on its merits, in each particular case.

2. HNSW has said that it will take a 'measured approach' to contacting tenants whom they would like to consider relocation. As far as we can tell, this means that they will not be sending letters out en masse, but will make an approach to affected tenants in person. They have said that this will be done by workers who have had some previous experience in assisting tenants through the process of relocation...

3. Tenants who agree to relocate, and are placed on the waiting list for a 'priority' transfer, may still have a lengthy wait for their new home. This will vary depending on the nature of the property required, and on other demand for properties in their area. In particular, a tenant who has agreed to relocate in order to free up a property they have been 'under-occupying' will not be housed before an applicant for housing who has been assessed as 'at risk' (according to the eligibility criteria - and unless the under-occupying tenant is also assessed as being 'at risk' in addition to being an under-occupant).

4. A tenant who does not agree to relocate will have their rent subsidy adjusted immediately. A tenant who does agree to relocate will continue to pay according to their current rent. At some time, these agreeable under-occupants will be offered new properties and asked to move. If they do not then accept one of two offers (assuming the offers are 'reasonable', which means they will be subject to the usual processes of review and appeal), their rent subsidy will be adjusted to include the 'vacant bedroom charge'. They will also be removed from the transfer list.

We look forward to seeing this policy in full.

Please contact your local Tenants Advice & Advocacy Service if you are approached about the vacant bedroom charge, and would like to discuss the matter with an advocate.

Where do the parties stand on housing: part 5 – Saul Eslake (a non-party)

Yesterday we commended the Greens for their housing policy, including their 'Better Deal for Renters'. Today we commend Saul Eslake, whose natural habitat is the big end of town, on his  outline for a better housing policy – different from, but complementary to that of the Greens – and his critique of Australia's '50 years of housing failure'.

Please follow that link to Prosper Australia – it is essential reading.

Australia's two major parties do have a housing policy, despite their silence on the subject at election time. Their longstanding mutual policy is, tragically, to treat housing not as the seat of security and comfort that is the right of every citizen, but rather as a get-richer-quick scheme. In recent years, it has become a shady adjunct to retirement incomes policy, transferring the future incomes of younger households to older households for their present consumption.

There are plenty of people in both the major parties who would dispute this, because they genuinely don't see housing this way, and regard making housing less accessible and more expensive by deliberate policy as unconscionable. On their terms, then, faced with a 50-year track record of failure, they must change their parties' housing policies.

Where do the parties stand on housing: part 4 - The Greens

While we were making up housing policies for Labor and the Liberals, because neither had announced their own, another political party launched not just a housing policy, but also a 'Better Deal for Renters' too.

Here we take a look at the housing policy of The Greens.

Social housing
The Greens propose substantial new investment in social housing, to arrest the vicious circle of its present decline, and build 122 000 new dwellings over the new 10 years – equivalent to half the number of households currently on waiting lists around the country.

Because – let's face it – the Greens won't be forming government next week, one might object that the Greens can promise new housing as much as they like, because they'll not have to find the money for it. But what makes this promise worthy of attention is the innovative financing mechanism proposed: a suite of Affordable Housing Supply Bonds that would appeal variously to institutional investors – notoriously absent from rental housing investment in Australia – and 'retail' investors – the so-called 'mums and dads' who have run rampant over the rental market, leaving inflation, debt and insecurity in their wake. Any means of turning their resources instead to the production of new, affordable, secure social housing deserves consideration.

Affordable rental
To support other forms of affordable rental, the Greens are proposing an extension of the National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS), and some specific-purpose programs: a special Uni-NRAS for affordable student accommodation, and grants to enable vacant buildings – the real under-occupancy problem – to be converted to affordable rental housing.

Tax reform
The Greens propose cutting the capital gains tax discount rate from 50 per cent to 40 cent, as recommended by the Henry Review. This is one way of reducing the fatal attractiveness of negative gearing, so would not just increase government revenue, but also reduce distortion in the rental market too. We suggest that while they're at it, the Greens should consider land tax reform too – also recommended by the Henry Review.

The 'Better Deal for Renters'
In addition to their proposals for social housing and affordable housing, the Greens' 'Better Deal for Renters' comprises three elements.

The first is the establishment of a new national body to implement a new National Standard for Rental Housing. Matters for consideration in the Standard would include:

• improved security of tenure;
• stability and fairness of rents;
• a new efficiency standard for rental dwellings;
• standards as to the state of repair and physical security (ie locks, etc) of a dwelling; and 
• better legislative protection of vulnerable marginal renters.

The Greens don't go as far as specifying exactly what needs to be done in each in relation to each of these matters – that would be for the national body to advise, and it might itself come up with some other matters to advise on. As for the nature of the national body, the Greens indicate that it might be constituted like the National Dialogue on Universal Housing Design. This sort of industry and consumer stakeholder forum would be a welcome development, and probably be especially useful in advising on the efficiency standard, but we wonder how it would deal with the more contentious matters, particularly legal security of tenure and rents – it may be necessary for legislators to take the lead here. As for how the National Standard could be implemented – that is, by the Federal Government in areas that are usually the responsibility of States – the Greens propose using the processes of COAG and attaching some strings to Commonwealth funds. Fair enough.

The second element is actually a better deal for landlords too: a grant to help cover the cost of efficiency improvements required by the anticipated National Standard.

And the third element is additional funding for tenants' advocacy services. Declaration of interest: the Tenants' Union of NSW is, of course, one of those advocacy services. But the case for increased funding is strong, especially in Queensland, where the State Government still refuses to fund tenants advice and advocacy services there, and in New South Wales too, where TAASs do an extraordinary job on a budget that still set as if we're working in the rental market circa 2002.  

Well done to the Greens. We'd congratulate them for no other reason than their effort to get the hugely important matter of housing on the campaign agenda – but more than that, many of the measures they propose stack up as sound policy too. These are policies worth your consideration on election day – and worth consideration by whichever party forms government thereafter.

A heavy, blunt instrument

As if we needed another reason not to buy the Telegraph, on Sunday it weighed into the issue of public housing evictions on grounds of use of premises for illegal purposes.

There's not enough of 'em, bellowed the Tele:

ALMOST every attempt to kick out drug dealers, criminals and troublemakers from public housing fails, with the state tenancy tribunal rejecting more than three out of every four cases.

Of 418 applications made by the state government, only 96 cases, or 23 per cent, were successful, the most recent figures from the Consumer, Trader and Tenancy Tribunal to September last year show.

First problem with this: the very first sentence is contradictory on its face. 'Almost every attempt' at eviction fails... but about one in four succeed? At least it lets you know that a shameless beat-up is coming.

The second problem is less egregious, but it's still important to properly understanding the issue: the CTTT figures don't include all those cases where Housing NSW gives a termination notice on grounds of illegal use and the tenant moves out without Housing NSW applying to the Tribunal. How many of these cases there are, we cannot say (and it is not clear that Housing NSW can say either), but CTTT applications would be the tip of the termination iceberg.

The third problem is that the Tele has missed the real problem: that public housing tenants, when prosecuted for a criminal offence, are being exposed to the double jeopardy of a second prosecution, and possibly a second punishment, by Housing NSW. 

This is unfair to social housing tenants, because no other members of the community face this double jeopardy. (Try to imagine the Commonwealth Bank foreclosing on a mortgage, because a home-owner's son or daughter has been busted with a bag of pot.) Amongst landlords, the idea that enforcing the state's drug laws is part of the job is peculiar to social housing landlords, and Housing NSW in particular has unique access to police information under the NSW Police Privacy Code.

It is also bad in terms of the interests of criminal justice. The criminal justice system is capable of  a range of responses to offending, from fines and good behaviour bonds to home detention and actual imprisonment. This is particularly the case in relation to drug offences, where courts may order an offender to take part in rehabilitation programs, to appropriately punish the offender and start getting them on a better track.

By contrast, in its prosecutions Housing NSW wields only a very heavy, blunt instrument: eviction. When Housing NSW weighs in, it can upend the relatively sophisticated responses that the criminal justice system has made, by making a person (and the rest of their household) homeless and out of the reach of rehabilitation.

So, it's in the interests of justice that the Tribunal has the power to decline an application by Housing NSW for termination. (That said, tenants advocates often have to argue hard for the Tribunal to exercise its discretion.) It would be in the interests of justice, too, if Housing NSW would not second guess the criminal justice system, and not pursue these matters before the criminal proceedings have been finalised, and not where the courts have seen fit to punish an offender with orders that allow – or even require – that they stay in their home.

 

Wearing it Purple - 30th August.

You may notice some changes on some sites in our corner of the internet this weekend- they're temporary, but important.

Friday the 30th of August is "Wear it Purple" Day, a day that seeks to raise awareness about the issues faced by rainbow (ie sexuality- and gender-diverse) young people and the need to eradicate bullying based on sexuality and gender diversity.

Young people are one of the most vulnerable groups of renters, finding it difficult to compete against older, richer and more established renters. That may be the lot of the young renter, but we also hear from young people who are being taken for a ride, or unfairly accused of various antisocial behaviours.

In your correspondents time as a tenant advocate, there was one particular case where a young gay couple lived in a building with mostly older residents. They lived fairly quietly, but were constantly accused of having 'wild parties' because they were some of 'those type of boys'. Due to the persistence of a particular owner-occupying neighbour, the matter got all the way to the CTTT, and the tenants were facing termination. Fortunately the matter was resolved there- of the various wild parties they were accused of holding, only two dates were given. Both 'wild parties' turned out to be the tenants and their parents having Sunday dinner- a total of 5 people, and the guests went home at about 8pm.

We're supporting Wear It Purple because, just like all tenants, rainbow youth have the right to peace, comfort and privacy in their tenanting lives. We'd encourage you to wear it purple too- click the links above to see how!

Where do the parties stand on housing: part 3 – Labor

Last week, after much squinting and reading between the lines, we convinced ourselves that we could see the outlines of the Liberal Party's housing policy (reforming negative gearing – it only makes sense).

Faced with a similar absence of an express housing policy from Labor, we now apply to them the same line of inquiry and deduction.

Upon returning to the Labor leadership, Kevin Rudd outlined a new narrative for the national economy, the Federal Government and the Australian public. Breaking from the previous leadership team's tendency to cozy buttering-up, Rudd presented a more challenging narrative: that the mining boom and associated windfall gains to the national income were passing, and that if we're to enjoy increased incomes in the future, we're going to have to earn them.

In other words, the Australian economy will have to become more competitive.

Rudd's 'new national competitiveness agenda' encompasses a wide range of issues, but we can reduce these to a couple of broad themes. First, there's the problem of those factors of production that are too costly, and that may cause Australia to 'price itself out of international business'. In particular, Rudd highlights the high cost of electricity, and the cost of government regulation. He also mentions, more obliquely, the high cost of the Australian dollar.

He might also have mentioned the high cost of land.

The second broad theme is the problem of those parts of the economy that promise great enhancements in productivity – but are starved of funds for investment. Rudd identifies the areas in need of investment as education, skills and training; infrastructure – roads, rail, ports, urban transport and the NBN; and small business, which might produce eggs in a diversity of baskets other than mining but which need greater access to capital.

He might have mentioned the flip-side of this problem: the huge over-allocation of capital in land, particularly housing, which is reflected not just in its high price but in the lack of access to capital and credit for really productive activities.

True, some of the investment in land and housing markets has actually produced wealth, in the form of new dwellings, and higher quality shelter – but not that much. Rather, most of the shedload of money that's been borrowed and sunk into these markets has done nothing more productive than shuffle the title certificates around, as speculators position themselves to capture wealth from others – whether that's the life-time of future earnings pledged by the individual mortgaged purchaser, or the gains in value created by the whole of the community through its investment in infrastructure or simply through its numerical growth and hence more intense demand for land.

In policy terms, what Rudd's competitiveness agenda is driving at is obvious, if unstated: Labor must mean to implement a reformed, broad-based land tax.

A reformed land tax would be a tax on the value of on all land, including owner-occupied housing, and not merely the narrow range of commercial and rental properties that our present land taxes apply to.

Land tax reform would capture for the benefit of the community those unearned gains currently captured by speculators – and thereby chase off speculative investment in land and housing, and reduce prices. It would also allow for the lessening of the tax burden on labour and enterprise, reducing costs and freeing up their productive energies, so that they might take on the markets of the world.

Yes, that must be what Labor has mind.

And between Labor's land tax reforms, and the Liberal's negative gearing reforms, the Australian public surely has an embarrassment of housing policy riches to choose from on election day.

Millers Point/Barangaroo

Millers Point is in the news again, with an excellent article by Tim Barlass in the Sun-Herald that focuses on the residents of Millers Point, and some political and historical context by Evan Jones at New Matilda.

(Millers Point resident Robert Goodsell, 94. You'd like to think that he shouldn't have to worry about being evicted. Photo from the Sun-Herald.)

Not yet in the news is the outcome of the social impact assessment that was conducted recently for NSW Land and Housing Corporation, as part of the NSW State Government's review, announced in October last year, of its continuing ownership of the Millers Point properties. 

We understand that a draft report is with LAHC. The stated intention of the SIA consultant was that the drafted report should be made public, for discussion and feedback, before the final report goes in to LAHC. We look forward with interest to seeing the draft.

*

In the meantime, we might look over the boundary of Millers Point to Barangaroo, previously the wharves of east Darling Harbour, now being redeveloped into a glittering citadel of various land uses: commercial, cultural, residential, open space, and gambling.

There's no necessary connection between the development of Barangaroo and the review of properties at Millers Point: they're separate sites, and nothing needs to happen at Millers Point in order for any part of the development of Barangaroo to proceed (equally, if nothing was happening at Barangaroo, the Government might still be reviewing Millers Point).

But when people think about one, they often think about the other. So do we – in a critical way.

We're thinking particularly about the monumental, billion-dollar, international higher-roller casino proposed by James Packer's Crown Group for the middle section of Barangaroo, on land originally intended to be open space. You can see it, in the form that won Crown's design competition, below; it's the tallest of the towers in the image.

In design terms, the Brown Couch prefers one of the runners-up:

The runner-up is at least honest: it looks like nothing so much as a mugger's knife. What to make of the subtly turning forms of the winner? The twisting of a forearm?

But it's not the way the casino is to look that bugs us most. Rather, it's the depressing thought that we, as a society, have arranged our affairs such that we can marshal the huge resources – the machines, the labour, the steel, glass, concrete, electronics and myriad other elements – to build such a thing, for the purpose of attracting, from half a world away and conveyed here by yet more steel and glass and electronics and the combustion of thousands of tonnes of fossil fuels, a select few persons who will do nothing more than sit at tables and flip over little bits of cardboard and push around little pieces of plastic.  

But we can't organise things so that some marvelous old buildings can be properly repaired and maintained, and kept available for the community that has lived in them for years and, into the future, for newcomers – perhaps including in the mix working people who service the buildings and businesses of the city.

Or can we?