Tuesday, 3 October 2023

Public housing

Samantha RATNAM (Northern Metropolitan) (13:30): Victoria is experiencing the worst housing crisis in decades. Over 125,000 people are on the waiting list for public housing. On any given night over 30,000 people experience homelessness, and Victoria has the highest number of people seeking assistance for homelessness compared with all other states. Rents have increased by 18 per cent in Melbourne in the last year alone, and people are having to choose between food on the table and a roof over their head.

The Victorian Labor government released their long-awaited housing statement in September, with a promise that they would respond to the escalating housing crisis. But instead of a response, they announced a plan that could mean the end of public housing in Victoria and abandoned renters struggling with the cost of living. The plan will see 44 public housing high-rise buildings destroyed, with no commitment to building public housing. Furthermore, the majority of the public housing land will be privatised and sold to private developers for private housing at the opportunity cost of retaining this land to build more public housing.

The use of the public-private partnership to redevelop public housing estates in Victoria to date has been nothing short of disastrous. Most recently the government evicted 68-year-old Margaret Kelly from her public home of 25 years for the same privatisation and outsourcing plan. By the end of this plan Labor will have destroyed thousands of public homes, thrown 10,000 people into uncertainty and gifted property developers millions. This plan will fail because privatising public goods never works, and the people who will suffer are the tens of thousands of Victorians who will struggle to put a roof over their head for decades to come.