Public Investment for the Public Good – addressing the housing crisis through public housing

Australian Council of Trade Unions submission to the Inquiry into Social Housing

Australia is experiencing a housing crisis, a crisis that is denying working people peace, security and prosperity. Housing has become simply unaffordable for many working Australians – whether they are renting or attempting to buy a house. Workers are unable to afford to live near their work, they are living in sub-standard housing, in fear of landlords retaliating against requests for repairs or improvements with rent hikes or eviction or they are pushing their finances to their limit to service sky-high mortgages, hoping against hope that the Reserve Bank won’t increase interest rates.

Australians do not need to live this way. Our housing crisis is not uniquely Australian, but it is home-grown. There are countries where working people are not obsessed with real estate, they are not lying awake at night worried about the rent and their young people are not despairing of ever owning a house. Workers in these nations are confident that they will be able to live near their work and that housing will be available and affordable for their children. These countries all have two things in common that Australia must embrace:

• They have seized on the countless opportunities to invest in public housing, make public housing more accessible to their people and affordable to build, and
• They have taken other actions to take some of the pressure off the housing system and the people in it, like rental reforms.

Drawing from our recently released ACTU Housing Plan which lays out a comprehensive agenda for fixing housing affordability, improving home ownership and enhancing the security and equity of other models of housing access, this submission will outline how Australia can learn from these experiences – how we can invest in public housing to create a different housing market for current and future generations.

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