AN APPEAL FROM HOMELESS PERSONS UNION- MAKE YOUR VOTE COUNT

At the Vigil for Public Housing held on Parliament House Steps
organised by Joe Toscano, Independent Candidate for Albert Park.

HOMELESS PERSONS UNION VICTORIA

So what actually happened to the former residents of The Gatwick in St Kilda, victims of gentrification? Weren't there reassurances at the time that they would be safely rehoused?

POST BY HOMELESS PERSONS UNION VICTORIA.

"Lethal article released just before Victorians go to the polls. If this isn't a good enough reason to build more #publichousing and for the Andrews Labor government to stop hiding the fact that SCORES of public housing across this city and this state LIE EMPTY, we don't know what is.

Over 86,000 people on the Victorian public housing waiting list, hundreds of people sleeping in the CBD every night - - Labor's promise of building 1,000 new public housing places is just not going to cut it - it's not just insulting, it's a form of STATE VIOLENCE. 

You won't hear the homelessness organisations saying this, as they are dependent on government money to do their work. This is the crisis we are in in 2018 Australia, folks. It's a humanitarian disaster.

Think about your vote on Saturday and if you give two hoots about equality, justice and dignity in this state, give your vote to those who have a genuine public housing policy. Not 'social', not 'affordable', not 'community' housing - that's just more money for the corporations. We're talking about PUBLIC HOUSING - owned by US.

Homeless Persons Union Victoria
https://www.facebook.com/HPUVIC/

'Alarming' number of women forced to move out of the Gatwick for The Block are now in jail

https://www.msn.com/…/alarming-number-of-women-…/ar-BBPVhK6…

Meanwhile, in the following article

"Fans of The Block and those looking for a “rich people’s” home rejoice. The former Gatwick Hotel’s now luxuriously renovated apartments are officially for sale, with the listings landing online today." The renovated apartments will range from $2.2 million to $2.75 million.

https://www.domain.com.au/news/the-block-2018-the-5-gatwick-hotel-apartments-for-sale-by-auction-in-st-kilda-20180827-h14ff6-760335/

PUBLIC HOUSING RALLY - STATE LIBRARY-FRI 9 NOV AT 6PM

DEMOCRACY IS NOT A SPECTATOR SPORT. I personally believe that it is very important for citizens to become active in affecting change, and this is something we should all be doing, if we possibly can. Go where your passion is, and make a difference! It is written into the Charter of Human Rights that citizens have the right to partake in political and public life.

MEET THE ACTIVISTS WHO ARE FIGHTING TO SAVE PUBLIC HOUSING 

The following BLOG-POST which addresses the issue of housing affordability is by MICHAEL NAISMITH - member of the PUBLIC HOUSING DEFENSE NETWORK.
PHDN is organising the following RALLY. Put the date in your diary. 
Come along, bring your friends and help us to SAVE PUBLIC HOUSING. 
Visit us on Facebook    https://www.facebook.com/publichousingdefencenetwork/
                                        https://www.facebook.com/FOPHVIC/

WHY ARE ORDINARY PEOPLE ALWAYS AT THE MERCY OF PROFITEERS?
Does it have to be that way? 

A Short History of Rent Control in Australia 
by Michael Naismith

What is rent control?

Rent control is a form of regulation limiting the amount of rent a private landlord can charge. It can also include putting limits on the size of rent increases, or how often increases are allowed to be implemented.

Lots of people have heard that rent control, or rent regulation, exists in some counties in Europe, or in some states in the US, but very few are aware that it has also existed at various times in Australia.

For the most part governments have been forced to reign in private landlords during times of economic and social crisis.

Rent control was first introduced in New South Wales during the First World War in 1916, as part of the Fair Rents Act. This Act was amended in 1928 to wind back rent controls, but during the Great Depression rent controls were reintroduced with the Reduction of Rent Act (1931). This resulted in a 23% reduction in rents and restrictions on evictions.

The powers-that-be once again ended rent control with the Landlords and Tenants (Amendment) Act in 1932. This chopping and changing mostly coincided with changes of government at the New South Wales state level. 

At the beginning of World War Two, 50% of all households were tenants of private landlords. The Commonwealth, under its defense powers, introduced the National Security (Fair Rents) Regulations 1939. This gave the states the power to freeze rents and establish Fair Rent Boards.  

A form of rent control existed in most states across Australia and continued until August 1948. 

At this point there was a constitutional challenge against the government’s right to continue wartime price controls. These controls were kept in the context of social unrest, strikes, communist agitation and the recent experience of the Great Depression. The constitutional challenge led to an unsuccessful referendum, where the Chifley government attempted to gain back rent and other price control measures. 

The Landlord and Tenants Act 1948 maintained rent control in New South Wales beyond this, in order to provide security of tenure to all tenants. This was because of the dire need for accommodation following the war. 

In 1954 however, all newly constructed buildings were exempted from the Act, and by 1956 a premise could be ‘decontrolled’ when vacated if registered with the Fair Rent Board. In 1960 there were still 207,000 controlled dwellings, which amounted to two thirds of all private rental properties. 

In 1968, ‘wealthy tenant provisions’ were introduced to bring rents up to market value, winding back rent control further.

By 1974 there were only 20,000 rent-controlled tenancies in New South Wales and by 1986 no new protected tenancies could be created. The exception to this was ‘inheritance’, where if tenant died then a spouse or dependent could continue the lease.

A similar story played out in Victoria, where the Landlord and Tenants Act 1958 restricted the application of rent control provisions to ‘prescribed premises’.  In 1956 there were 180,000 protected tenants, but this was slowly whittled away. The Residential Tenancy Act 1980 aimed to remove rent control on the remaining premises over a period of two years. It was estimated that up to 10,000 pensioners still had rent control at that stage, and this Act caused a massive increase in rents for those least able to afford it. 

In place of rent control, a new system was established in Victoria where a tenant could complain to the Residential Tenancy Tribunal if an increase in their rent was considered excessive. This was nowhere near as effective as proper government regulation.

Western Australia commenced the decontrol of rent in 1951. In Tasmania, rent control ended in 1955. In Queensland, protected tenancies were abolished in 1970 and in South Australia in 1962.

Today renters face renewed financial pressures, with millions once again suffering from rent stress. This is a direct consequence of landlords, developers and speculators making billions of dollars from people’s intrinsic need for a place to live.

As it stands, the rights of renters in Australia have been severely curtailed. There is a desperate need to build a movement of renters to pressure governments to overhaul the laws and grant renters much improved rights. 

Rent control and other reforms have been won in the past, they can be won again. Let’s renew the fight!  

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The Renters Fightback campaign calls for private rents to be capped at 20% of a tenant’s income, in addition to a requirement for landlords to be forced to maintain rental properties at a high standard. Tenants should also have the right to demand long-term security of tenure, including infinite leases.

For more information visit: https://www.facebook.com/RentersFightback/

by Michael Naismith

I ANSWER QUESTIONS PUT TO ME BY A JOURNALIST

Questions put to me by a journalist.

Only a small quote of what I wrote got into print. I post it here in full, with some updates, because this is the type of discussion we really need to be having publicly - before it's too late. More privatising of Public Housing across to Social/Community Housing is in the pipeline.  

And since we are following Britain's housing policies, read about the mass transfers of UK Council Housing in Britain ( their version of Public Housing ) that have already taken place, with disastrous consequences in terms of housing stress, poverty ( bedroom taxes ) and increasingly visible homelessness.

More and more voices are now joining together, saying the same thing - that the growth of Community (social) Housing must not be at the expense of Public Housing! 

A link to the article in question is at the bottom of the page.

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How did you get involved with Friends of Public Housing? What's your role with the group?

I'm a public tenant. My neighbour Jeremy Dixon and I used to be public tenant representatives for our estate in 2012 and attended meetings with the Department of Human Services. We discovered in our roles, that the government was handing over the ownership of public housing, under Labor's 'Asset Conversion Strategy'. I felt that it was wrong that titles of public assets were being given away and the general public was completely unaware of it. No-one believed us when we said that the government was "giving away" public housing, but in fact state governments had been doing it for some time. This is why today only 2.7 % of all housing in Victoria is public housing!

Meanwhile the need for public housing is growing all the time, and homelessness is escalating!

I am the convenor of Friends of Public Housing Victoria and together with Eileen Artmann, who founded the Facebook page, we act as spokespersons for the media.

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Why is it so important that social housing stays owned and run by the government?

First of all it is a function of the government - its Duty of Care and its responsibility- to ensure that all our citizens have a roof over their head. Homelessness is is an indictment on a prosperous country like Australia.

These properties are desperately needed public assets- now and for the future. They belong to the people of Victoria. The government has no right to dispose of them in this way. The fact that they are largely doing this in secret, seems to indicate that they are aware there would be more public opposition to their plans, if the public knew of it.

Community Housing Organisations consist of about 60 separate businesses in Victoria with varying policies regarding rent-setting and eligibility. They cater to 'low to medium' income earners, and unlike the public housing system, they can cherry pick who they house. The most vulnerable people, including the homeless, are often overlooked by Community Housing businesses. This policy direction is creating an underclass of homeless people with nowhere to turn, since we are losing public housing all the time, through demolitions,transfers to Community (Social ) Housing and sell-offs to the private sector.

The Public Housing system provides greater security of tenure for vulnerable people by offering them flexible rents that go up or down, depending on changing life circumstances, in Community Housing this is largely absent. Community Housing ( aka social housing ) often puts tenants on contracts, whereas Public Housing offers permanent tenure. There are more safeguards in Public Housing
regarding rent-setting.

So you see, that although Public and Community Housing now go by the umbrella name ‘Social Housing’ they are two very distinct models of housing with serious differences and implications for tenants.

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Do you see a risk that if social housing sites are privately owned, their use might be changed down the track, leaving people more vulnerable?

Yes. Community / Social Housing has been part of the housing landscape in Victoria for several years now, and we are already seeing indications of this. They cater for low to medium income earners. Extremely desperate people with high and complex needs are often ignored by 'Community Housing'.

In 2014 the 8 major Housing Associations housed hardly any of the applicants referred to them by DHS -preferring to find a percentage of prospective tenants eligible for public housing via their own methods. Although required to take 'up to 50%' of applicants referred by the Department from the Public Housing waiting list, the actual number of these referred applicants accepted by Community Housing Associations ranged from 0 to 18%! Seven of the eight major Housing Associations housed under 2% of government referred applicants !!

Many of these applicants referred by the government were those in the greatest need, or had been waiting many years for housing.

In response, the Community Housing Federation stated that Community Housing Organisations are 'independent bodies and are not subject to the control or direction of government unless there is a specific legal or contractual obligation in place to do so.The DHHS Guidelines are perhaps therefore better understood as a statement of general intent by government as to its desired outcomes.'

The peak body also attempted to justify the practice of favouring higher-paying tenants, by complaining that they receive no financial compensation by the government to house those on very low incomes. ( The largesse given to them by successive governments in terms of properties, funding and ongoing Commonwealth Rent Assistance is staggering. )

The writing is on the wall. 

The people that Community Housing is failing to house, will find that they have nowhere to go. If the government continues to hand over public housing to these very businesses, there will no longer be the safety net of Public Housing!

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What would you say to those who see a need for public housing to be built or updated by whatever means necessary – even if it means private developers are footing the bill?

I would say to them, "How bad do outcomes have to be before you tell the government to go back to the drawing board?"

The "Public Housing Renewal Program" will result in a massive loss of irreplaceable public land to private developers, ( around three quarters ) and only a token increase of 'social housing' (10% ). Three bedroom family units will be replaced by 1 and 2 bedroom units resulting in an actual decrease in capacity to house people, and it's unlikely, that even that will be genuine public housing. With a waiting list of 37,000 applications for Public Housing, ( made up of 58,000 adults and 25,000 children )  Labor’s housing policy direction is indefensible.

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Does Friends of Public Housing support not-for-profit organisations building and running public housing? Why or why not?

The small housing providers are becoming a thing of the past. The changing face of 'Community Housing' is that we are dealing with increasingly large corporations. The eight major players, the Community Housing Associations, those that are most likely to win the tenders, are also property developers.

The term ‘Not-for-Profit’ can be a bit misleading because they are still required to be
profitable in the usual sense of the word - their income needs to exceed their expenses. And to achieve this end can be often be at the expense of the tenants. ( ie cherry picking prospective tenants and raising rents if need be )

An ongoing stream of federal public money in the form of Commonwealth Rent Assistance is required by not-for-profit Community Housing businesses as an operating subsidy. Public tenants do not need CRA because their rents are truly affordable, being outside market forces. We think that this ongoing stream of funding would be far better used to build more public housing.

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What do you think needs to be done to provide the large amount of public housing needed in Victoria? Where does FOPHV want the government to get the funds from?

Firstly the government needs to genuinely recommit to the principles of Public Housing, hold on to and maintain the existing public housing stock, and keep ownership of the land. It should stop transferring these assets to Community Housing businesses and the private sector. It should also stop funding Community Housing at the expense of Public Housing. Labor is planning a 'Billion Dollar Social Housing Growth Fund' and $100 million dollars worth of loans, all of which is intended for Community Housing Associations. Meanwhile Public Housing is starved of the funding it needs to survive and thrive.

http://www.premier.vic.gov.au/reform-growth-and-better-outcomes-for-social-housing/

Victoria recently received $2.077 billion from the sale of the Snowy Hydro Project, and an unexpected $1.8 billion from the GST. These windfalls need to be spent on improving infrastructure. I cannot think of a project more deserving and more necessary than improving and delivering more public housing to address the housing crisis and homelessness.

Sometimes it is not so much the lack of money, but the lack of political will that’s the problem..

Take the complete and utter waste of 9 billion dollars in Federal funds to address the housing crisis and homelessness under the Rudd Housing Agreement which began in 2009. Not one benchmark was achieved by the states in all that time! Where did all that money go? The executive director of Federation of Housing Associations admitted that there had been little transparency and it was "difficult to understand how that money has been spent"! During that time, the amount of Public Housing continued to decline and was allowed to fall into disrepair.

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Would FOPHV members call themselves, for all intents and purposes, "PHIMBYs" ( Public Housing In My Back Yard )

Yes we are PHIMBYs. We want to see a robust, well-managed public housing sector which will provide housing for a broader demographic and present a viable alternative to home ownership and the private rental market.

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Do you think there's a growing number of people in Melbourne who want to see public housing
kept public?

Absolutely. When we take our message to the streets, we find that most people are completely unaware of the paradigm shift that is occurring. They are confused by the terms 'Public Housing, Community Housing and Social Housing' which are used interchangeably and obfuscates the fact that public housing is being privatised by stealth.

When the public learn of this, they are shocked. The public generally oppose the privatisation of public assets. They know that the market will not be able to solve the housing crisis and homelessness.

Interestingly when the Liberals were in power in Victoria they were more frank about describing the transfer of public housing to Community / Social Housing as privatisation, whereas Labor seems to want to avoid the word at all costs.

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Sources -
1. Access to Community Housing in Victoria. Nov 2015 by Community Housing Federation of Victoria. p6 of 14.

2. The Australian "9BN home affordability scheme to be dumped in May Budget"

3. Article in the Age
 https://www.domain.com.au/news/you-know-nimbys-and-met-the-yimbys-now-here-come-the-phimbys-20180421-h0z1il/

BARRY DICKINS-REFLECTIONS ON THE HOMELESS.

We welcome writer, larrikin and social commentator, Barry Dickins.
Barry has joined Friends of Public Housing Vic and the fight to save Public Housing.

Here is his Barry's first contribution to this Blog including his drawings.
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The other afternoon I was motoring along a pleasant street that faced the old Carlton Football Ground. The terraces looked genteel and Christmas-Cake sweet, and the upper middle classes jogged, examining their blood pressure on costly gauges worn decorously around their beautiful wrists, and well-off people shook hands with expensive hyper-sensitive architects, and all the cars were BMWs or better.

Then all of a sudden I observed about fifty 'down-and-outs' trying to get out of the unexpected rain and into sleeping bags that looked comfortless. Cold they all looked, so cold.

As opposed to the discrete ruling classes exercising their egotistical prowess with no stress about what supper shall fetch to their hypersensitive taste-buds, the silent Wailing Wall of Homeless wouldn't have the foggiest what the cold snap would fetch in the middle of an atrocious August.

And I just took them into my retinas, retained them in my Agony Camera. No Red Cross vans were there to dispense hot soup or a slice of toast and no police officers, who in my opinion, should lead the charge in defense of the homeless against the unwritten crime of sleeping rough. No media covered the homeless, who should have covered them, not with paragraphs, but with blankets.

I got out of the car and sat on the railing, and watched one after the desultory other, take his or her place amongst the squashed lines of flattened cartons for pillows, and wet-through newspapers and slippery expanses of plastic and vinyl for their beds. They were so lost and hopeless, you half expected some of them to cry out, but night was falling fast and sleep loomed in its vagrant fashion.

Something in me wanted to cross the wet park and perch a while with them, as I wondered about their fate. I wanted to see for myself what they had to chew on, and sip on. The elderly amongst them looked like me in a fashion-  as in 'out of fashion', and the old white-heads and care-worn ladies looked not so much defeated as plain starving. Some were sipping from bottles of water, and others sat and smoked in a calm or sort of bored-stupid way.

Although the real stupidity was the fact that right near them, there was so much unattended, unoccupied Public Housing.

REFLECTIONS OF GROWING UP IN PUBLIC HOUSING

 


A young woman who grew up in Public Housing sent me this excellent piece of writing about the community she grew up in, the hidden prejudice and stigma toward public tenants, classism, and the process of gentrification ( largely unreported and unchallenged ) which is already well underway by Vic Labor, under the guise of 'renewing' Public Housing. She chose to remain anonymous. 

This blog is a forum which welcomes a diversity of voices and experiences.

I started to realise, somewhere between seven years old and my early teens, that living in public housing was different to just living in a house. The realisation was slow, ongoing, and often accompanied by learning to feel ashamed. Messages from media, from people I came across, sometimes from art, and from friends and family (usually, most painfully, unwittingly), told me that I should be ashamed. The response from friends and family when I gently or vehemently challenged the occasional stereotyped comment was “no! not you!”.  Not me, they said, they didn’t mean me!  There was always disconnection between their sweeping generalisations or firmly held beliefs and me.

I just remember being bewildered hearing about those supposed “welfare cheat, dole bludgers”. If they'd existed, I’d never seen them.

To me, people were just utterly confused in their ideas about the people who lived in the public housing, people who got "benefits" – people like me, my sister, and my mum (who fled domestic violence). They seemed to be talking about people who weren’t really “in need”. But I certainly couldn’t recognise any of these so-called “welfare cheats” around me. I only saw my friends and their families.

Sometimes, people didn’t even know they were talking about me when they voiced their opinions about the working-class, the poor, and those who live in public housing.

Not the classmate I had in high-school who asked my teacher if the suburb I happened to live in was a “good or dodgy” suburb because their mum had told them that “there was a lot of commission housing around there”.

Not the university lecturer who asked my class to consider how they’d feel “if public housing was built next to them”. The latter example was an exercise meant to ask an, ostensibly, comfortably middle-class group of young people to challenge their own preconceived notions and prejudices.

As an “invisible” poor kid in the class, I just felt ashamed (but also exposed) and also like I wasn’t supposed to there. As if people didn’t think that people in public housing could be right next them in class, that poor people couldn’t be curious people with hopes and passions and inner-worlds who’d made it to university. There are, of course, real structural barriers which mean it’s less likely that a low income young person enters or stays in tertiary education, but alienating us from the institution and behaving as if we’re not there isn’t a way to address those structural barriers – it just strengthens them.

Through these experiences, I started to realise that things which were self-evident to me - that welfare is necessary and good and never wasted, that public housing and the people who build their lives in it are vital parts of a community, that disadvantage is structural - weren't always to self-evident to others. Even when those others were my loving friends or family.

I realised that sometimes we don't make these connections more broadly, even if we’re literally related to someone, not necessarily out of malice but because we're people who want to be comfortable in our worlds.

Recognizing the utter randomness of misfortune, the actual and reason defying inequity in our own families and friendship circles, disrupts what we need to believe is a just world.

In recent months, I have become more vocal about my experiences.

However, until the Public Housing Renewal was proposed, I’d been self-conscious of ever talking about them, reticent to divulge my history and get too vulnerable, afraid of over-stating my experiences, reticent to even describe myself as having been poor because, really, I am simply a person among many who's lived something many others have - others, who are more articulate, are dealing with (or have dealt with) worse circumstances, others who have fewer people who'll care to listen, who have fewer resources, or who will face less sympathetic audiences due to the colour of their skin, or past or present struggles with employment or mental health or substances, or for having an accent, or for not using ‘big words’. So, writing about it feels indulgent.

Something I ask of readers is to consider why you might be more receptive to hearing about the history and present realities of people living in so-called Australia who live in public housing if they are white, university educated, or not from a refugee background, or not a single mother, employed, or not presently struggling with mental health, or with substances. Consider your prejudices – maybe you didn’t even realise you had them! –  and challenge your own discomfort. Challenge yourself to think of everyone as having an important story to tell. Listen more, learn, and learn to relate. Empathy becomes contagious.

I am with and for public housing residents, with and for the so-called “Centrelink dole-bludgers”, with and for poor people. All poor people. I won’t be separated from them because I refuse. Because I challenge the part of myself that still sometimes feels pangs of embarrassment, shame and stigma.

I oppose Victorian Labor’s Public Housing Renewal Plans in the name of people who need secure homes, for the people they are and dream of being.

Gentrification is a word that a lot of left-leaning people – dare I say it, some Labor voters and politicians too – like to speak-out about. But I wonder if they truly understand what it means… this “renewal” plan is literally gentrification. It will result in the forced unravelling and removal of refugee communities, single-mothers, elderly people, and children, from their homes, from the amenities-rich inner-city.




Gentrification is raising rent prices so much that people are pushed out of their communities and the suburbs they’ve called home for years, decades, generations.

It is bound to the past and present dispossession of Aboriginal people of land that always will be theirs, that was stolen through the violence of colonisation, that is continuing through presently - that can be identified in Government policies.  It’s why I think we can be more careful than to stand behind rally cries of "it's public land – it’s OUR land" without question, if we’re not Indigenous. It's not simply “anyone's” land – it’s stolen land, it’s Aboriginal land - and we should not disappear this reality by being clumsy with this activism.

So, I am writing this for people - imperfect people, proud people - who are complicated, and who want to live in their homes. For the  people I grew up with and around, the other “commission house kids” in all our differences, with all our friction and friendship.

Also, for you, for your children, and for the society I want to live in that says people deserve shelter simply because they exist.