PROPERTY CLEARANCES

Did you know that in the financial year of 2012/13 the Victorian Liberal Coalition government tried to vacate 5,478 public housing properties by applying for thousands of  eviction notices to be sent to the occupants? Only 304 of these proposed evictions were approved by VCAT.

Lets look at the article in question. See link below.

As stated by the CEO of the Tenants Union – eviction from public housing often results in homelessness. Public housing is the last stop. But unfortunately there is no subsequent condemnation of this action against public tenants by the state government from the Tenants Union.

And who are the mysterious, unidentified 'public housing advocates' - sometimes quoted in newspaper articles - who invariably echo government housing policy and attempt to justify such actions against public tenants?

We know that the focus of these eviction notices was on rental arrears.

It would be interesting to know how much arrears needed to occur before the department applied for Notices to Vacate. What measures, if any, were taken to resolve outstanding rental arrears before deciding on this course of action ?

Instead of addressing these issues, the article goes off on a different tangent - bringing up hackneyed stories of the Big Bad Anti-Social Public Tenant. Two examples are given which include drug deals, sawn off shotguns, steel bars, and even the hurling of eggs ..

But these thousands of intended evictions were not about antisocial behaviour – the matter at hand was overwhelmingly rental arrears. To raise lurid examples of 'antisocial behaviour' only serves to further stigmatise and misrepresent public tenants which is very unfair.

The real story here is of an unconscionable attempt by the government of the day to clear properties which would result in homelessness for individuals and families. The question to ask is what was the government's real agenda in doing this?  The article says that the government's objective was to reclaim the properties. 
 

THE LANGUAGE OF EVICTIONS

The CEO of the Tenants Union refers to tenants being 'booted' out of public housing.

Public tenant evictions are often described by media in this way. Apparently we don't get evicted like other people - with all the trauma that evictions and impending homelessness brings – including the trauma to families and children. No. All too often we read of public tenants being kicked out, thrown out, turfed out, chucked out, and booted out of their public housing homes.  Into homelessness ...

In spite of my criticism regarding the bias demonstrated in this article - at least the Herald Sun reported this important information. I have found no reference to the applications made by the previous Victorian government to vacate 5,478 households in any other mainstream newspaper … 

Public tenants are a group very much at risk of homelessness, and an example like this one, of an attempt to evict en masse thousands of public tenants, in the course of a year, should be more widely known.

Thankfully the Victorian Civil Administration Tribunal - VCAT - threw out the vast majority of these applications.

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The children in this photo belong to the close-knit public housing community where I live.

They'd been playing a lively game of soccer.

Sources

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/government-threatens-to-evict-thousands-in-housing-crackdown/story-fni0fit3-1226752997778

STANDING IN SOLIDARITY WITH INDIGENOUS PUBLIC TENANTS

The UNCLE JACK CHARLES AWARD is an award that recognises outstanding achievement by an indigenous artist. As an exception to the usual practice, Jack Charles also awarded it to Friends of Public Housing Victoria for our voice of opposition regarding the controversial 'Three Strikes Eviction Policy' which applies to public housing tenants across Australia.

“I would like to award the strong men and women of Friends of Public Housing Victoria an Uncle Jack Charles Award for their stand against the ridiculous ‘Three strikes and you’re out’ policy. So many more homeless people –indigenous and non indigenous - will cause a further generation of the forsaken. I’m appalled.”
Jack Charles - Aboriginal Elder Statesman

FOPHV is honoured to receive this award, and we thank Jack Charles for his staunch support. 

How many indigenous public tenants have been evicted due to this policy in Western Australia and Queensland ?

The Three Strikes Eviction Policy is particularly harsh in Western Australia, where three minor incidents in a 12-month period will result in proceedings for termination of the tenancy.

In June 2013 The Equal Opportunity Commission WA issued a report called   ‘A Better Way’.   It was highly critical of the Disruptive Behaviour Management Strategy DBMS- colloquially known as the ‘Three Strikes Eviction Policy’

Quotes from the report by Commissioner for Equal Opportunity WA,

Yvonne Henderson

‘It would appear that public housing tenants are in many cases described in this report subject to a harsher regime than tenants in the private market.’

‘Homelessness should never be used as a punitive measure to shape behaviour in a group with such documented disadvantage’

‘This report recommends that the DBMS scheme should be limited to its original intention – to target dangerous and illegal activities and should not capture the range of normal domestic activities which it does at present.’

Sources

http://v1180u1.vividcluster2.crox.net.au/docs/default-source/publications/a-better-way-report.pdf?sfvrsn=2  Forward and p34

HOUSING - PUTTING YOU IN THE PICTURE

What is the difference between public, community and social housing? 

Aren't they the same thing?  No they are not.

Community Housing is non-government housing which is intended to cater for tenants on

low to moderate incomes. In Victoria they consist of 8 large 'Affordable Housing' Associations which are also property developers and 34 other Community Housing Providers. There is at least 32 other community housing providers operating in Victoria which are not subject to any government policies.

The terms 'community' and 'social housing' should not be confused with public housing. Only public housing is government owned and government managed. There are protections in public housing such as flexible rents based on household income, and security of tenure which are all too often missing in community housing.

The language surrounding the privatisation of public housing is so full of spin that, in the

end, nobody knows what is going on. Warm fuzzy words like 'social', 'community' and 'affordable' housing can make it difficult to see that transferring stock equates to the privatisation by stealth of an essential public asset - public housing.

Look at the term 'not-for-profit'. People sometimes assume that not-for-profits are small

struggling organisations. Not necessarily so. Not-for-profits can be huge companies, most

certainly profit driven, often merging and swallowing up the smaller struggling groups

along the way - in fact behaving just like any other corporation.

Some history.

The growth of 'Community Housing' - sometimes referred to as social housing - and the transferring of public housing properties has already been going on for some years now - under the public radar.

Already Community Housing Providers in Victoria own 8,290 properties which were

funded by the government ( including the transferring of public housing properties.)*

A major marker happened in 2009 at a Council of Australian Governments ( COAG ) meeting. An agreement was made between all the state governments and the federal government – at the time Labor – to ensure that community housing businesses would end up with 35% of all the 'social housing' pie.

This would not be in addition to the amount of public housing available, but at the expense of our existing public housing stock.

In fact, to achieve this goal in Victoria would require a massive transfer of 12,000 public housing properties to community housing companies, and is likely to include public housing estates which are already tenanted. This, of course, was not made at all clear in the ambiguous language of government documents.

Furthermore these proposed transfers do not create any additional housing to meet the desperate need but simply result in a change of ownership and/or management.

The whole topic of the public housing stock transfers ( aka asset transfers ) has been kept

hushed up as 'in-house' information. The people in the know have been the heads of these

organisations, politicians, service providers and people who are working in the industry.

The media have not adequately covered the topic, if at all.

Yet it is an extremely important matter of public interest. This is not just a public tenant issue. The future of public housing concerns us all.

Sources 

'Allocation, eligibility, and rent setting in the Australian community housing sector'  

*p21