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This was published 3 years ago
Private-sector, charities push for social housing-led economic recovery
By Rob Harris
The construction industry has joined with charities and welfare groups to push for a post-COVID-19 social housing boom to stimulate the economy, create more jobs and head off a potential increase in homelessness.
The nation's leaders are being urged to prioritise large-scale home-building investments in the months ahead to help aid economic recovery by incentivising new investment in the market and maintaining and upgrading existing social housing.
The construction sector is calling on governments to invest in social housing, kick-start the economy and helping deal with rising homelessness. Credit: Joe Armao
The Master Builders Association has urged governments and the private sector to partner to fill the gap as market demand softens, saying the way out of COVID-19 could be accelerated by investment into affordable supply, while boosting vital trade and valuable flow-on market activity.
Intrapac Property chief operating officer Max Shifman said the nation was suffering from the effects of decades of chronic under-investment from all sides and levels of government.
"We don’t get credit, but the private development sector has actually delivered the vast majority of affordable housing over the past 30 years. But it clearly has not been enough," said Mr Shifman, vice-president of the Urban Development Institute of Australia.
"Affordable and social housing by definition needs a level of government support to be viable; the burden cannot be borne by the private sector alone."
He said government could deliver a greater proportion of affordable housing with improved planning processes, red tape reduction and infrastructure to support the population and deliver equity of access.
Janet Goodwin, chief executive of South Port Community Housing Group, said even before the pandemic the need for more social housing was urgent, with long waiting lists and a chronic lack of properties to meet demand.
She said with the expected economic downturn from COVID-19, more people were going to need access to social housing.
"It’s time to stop the mucking around," Ms Goodwin said. "It’s time to support people doing it tough, and grow the economy, through large and speedy investment in construction of new social housing."
State governments have housed many of Australia's more than 116,00 homeless in vacant hotels since the outbreak, but welfare groups are warning of a massive increase in numbers when restrictions are lifted, with an average of 250 people already being turned away from crisis centres every day.
Victorian federal Labor MP Josh Burns said with unemployment estimated to go deep into double figures and an international travel ban that may last years, Australia must find a way to locally stimulate the economy out of a deep recession.
He said more than 50 per cent of Australians under 35 are now renters and will now will face increased rental stress on top of their compounding debt after the six-month eviction moratorium period.
"Ongoing support for people will be important as we extract ourselves from the coronavirus settings... Australians cannot afford more of what we saw from the conservatives for the past seven years, we need a government that won’t leave people behind," Mr Burns said.
"Building more housing across the spectrum – from social housing to affordable housing to the broader residential market – will be vital".
Master Builders Association chief executive Denita Wawn said job losses and business closures were having a devastating impact on demand for new residential building activity, risking the viability of nearly 400,000 building and construction businesses and the jobs of 1.2 million Australians.
"Our calls for governments at all levels to accelerate the construction of social, defence and transport infrastructure projects will continue to be relentless," Ms Wawn said.