Simon Pinnegar

The Comeback of National Housing Policy in Australia: First Reflections

Abstract Following election of a new national government in November 2007, Australian housing policy is undergoing major reform under the leadership of the first dedicated national Housing Minister since 1996. A new intergovernmental agreement to frame future housing policy and drive major reform of social housing commenced in 2009. The Australian Government has also embarked on a variety of major housing initiatives that include: offering subsidies to private investors in new affordable rental housing; subsidising costs of residential development where savings are passed to homebuyers; and national partnership agreements, which incorporate targets to improve housing in remote Indigenous communities and to significantly reduce homelessness. As well, investments in additional social housing and cash assistance to first homebuyers have featured strongly in economic stimulus packages that are designed to offset domestic impacts of the global financial crisis. An increase of over 220 per cent in national government expenditure on housing over the period 2008/09 to 2011/12 indicates the magnitude of change. This paper documents Australias new policy settings and examines the reform directions critically in the context of the ongoing debate in the housing literature about the role of national housing policy in increasing the supply of affordable and appropriate housing, economic development, wealth creation and social welfare.

Innovation for a carbon constrained city: Challenges for the built environment industry

Abstract The built environment, especially that of our largest cities, faces substantial change in the next twenty years if it is to meet the increasing demands for carbon neutrality, reduced water consumption and more efficient resource consumption. The industries that design, build, retrofit, manage and maintain the built environment face equally significant changes in organisation, working practices and skills development, approaches to design and construction and materials development if they are to meet these challenges. Equally, the institutional and governance structures within which they operate will need to undergo fundamental changes, not least in terms of changed regulatory and incentive structures to stimulate innovation and adaptation of new sustainability goals and outcomes. This paper reviews the key drivers of change facing the built environment and analyses the major challenges facing the built environment industry, broadly constituted, in adapting to these drivers.

Suburban reinvestment through ‘knockdown rebuild’ in Sydney

Cities are continually built and unbuilt (Hommels, 2005), reflecting cycles of investment and disinvestment across space, the machinations of housing and urban policy interventions, and shifting patterns of household need, demand, choice and constraint. The drivers of change are fluid and reflect shifting political, institutional, technological, environmental and socio-economic contexts. Urban landscapes evolve in concert with these changes, but the built environment tends to be defined more in terms of spatial fixity and the path-dependency of physical fabric. Suburban neighbourhoods register this dynamism in different ways as they have flourished, declined and subsequently revalorised over time. Changes initiated through redevelopment, from large-scale public renewal to alterations and renovations by individual owner-occupiers, are long-standing signifiers of reinvestment (Montgomery, 1992; Munro & Leather, 2000; Whitehand & Carr, 2001). Our concern here relates to a particular form of incremental suburban renewal: the increasing significance of private ‘knockdown rebuild’ (KDR) activity. KDR refers to the wholesale demolition and replacement of single homes on individual lots. We are interested in the scale and manifestations of this under-researched process and, in particular, the new insights offered to debates regarding gentrification, residential mobility and choice, and in turn, potential implications for metropolitan housing and planning policy. Our focus is Sydney, Australia.

The Question of Scale in Housing-Led Regeneration: Tied to the Neighbourhood?

Despite recognition of the fluid, interconnected nature of urban drivers and outcomes operating across a variety of spatial scales, the use of area-based initiatives in urban regeneration and renewal policy continues to fix space in order to identify scope, determine legitimacy, and clarify accountability. Even if multiple scales are acknowledged in policy discourse and strategy, actual boundaries defining a policys geography of interest have typically focused on the neighbourhood. The emergence of citywide or subregional regeneration initiatives, such as Englands Housing Market Renewal pathfinder programme and Philadelphias Neighborhood Transformation Initiative, have been accompanied by different considerations as to how space is negotiated and enrolled both in strategic and in delivery terms. Using these ‘market shaping’ initiatives as a basis for discussion, I seek to add to debates regarding the tensions tied up in fixing space from the practical perspective of programme implementation. While a partial defence of boundary setting is offered, the influence and impact of scale arising from the delimitation of space are seen as crucial factors in determining how complex initiatives sustain their rationale and deliver in practice. Exploring the challenges created by the disjuncture between the spaces of strategic thinking and the impact of those policies as experienced on the ground, the paper concludes by offering some perspectives as to why the neighbourhood retains a pervasive hold within regeneration policy as the point of mediation between the local and global.

Supersized Australian Dream: Investment, Lifestyle and Neighbourhood Perceptions among “Knockdown-Rebuild” Owners in Sydney

ABSTRACT Increasingly popular “supersized” dwellings, often twice as big as the traditional detached suburban house, have been widely criticized on social, environmental, economic and aesthetic grounds. This paper examines the emergence of infill-supersized dwellings in the older post-war suburbs of Sydney, Australia, through piecemeal replacement of older houses in a process known as knockdown-rebuild. The paper explores the reasons which encourage owners to build supersized houses, demonstrating the prominence of speculative aspirations, supported by Australian tax policies. It considers the consumption of supersized dwellings, and the implications for contemporary suburban lifestyles and communities. This paper concludes that infill-supersized dwellings ultimately represent a process of accentuating existing patterns of suburban settlement in Australia as opposed to a new departure.

Delivering affordable housing through the planning system in urban renewal contexts: converging government roles in Queensland, South Australia and New South Wales

This paper outlines the current Australian policy environment for delivering affordable housing in urban renewal contexts. An increasing shift towards infill development, coupled with a decreasing provision of government-owned social housing, is placing severe pressure on housing affordability. The cumulative effect is to create the need for governments to intervene on urban renewal projects to ensure that affordable housing options are delivered as a part of any new development. Three different approaches to planning for affordable housing in three states are examined: the former Urban Land Development Authority in Queensland, the 15% inclusionary zoning requirement in South Australia and the Affordable Rental Housing State Environmental Planning Policy in New South Wales. Despite significant differences between these approaches, a number of potential roles emerge for government to support delivery of affordable housing by market and not-for-profit housing providers, without adversely affecting development viability. These roles are as the land facilitator, educator, risk taker, subsidiser and long-term planner. Given that one aim of current policy directions is to reduce the role of government in delivering housing and urban growth, the paper concludes by considering the extent to which the approaches across the three states studied can be considered successful.

The First Home Owner Boost in Australia: A Case Study of Outcomes in the Sydney Housing Market

This article looks at the impact of the First Home Owner Grant (FHOG) ‘Boost’, a cash grant to first home buyers, which was introduced by the Australian Federal Government as part of the stimulus package in response to the global financial crisis (GFC) between October 2008 and September 2009. This policy initiative, based on a pre-existing FHOG, introduced in 2000 as a temporary support for the house building industry following the introduction of the Federal Goods and Services Tax, provided a major additional financial stimulus targeted at first home owners at a time when the GFC was threatening to destabilise the home purchase market. The policy was also promoted as a way of stimulating demand for new residential property to support jobs retention in the residential development industry. New South Wales, and in particular Sydney, provides a lens through which we explore the outcomes of the stimulus in terms of the geography of FHOG take-up and the types of property bought. It also assesses the impact of the Boost on first home owner purchase rates and the impact this had on post-stimulus housing demand.

Social infrastructure partnerships: a firm rock in a storm?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to use the example of public housing renewal public‐private partnerships (PPPs) to build knowledge on whether social infrastructure PPPs may appeal to the private sector as a less risky investment in a time of global financial uncertainty.Design/methodology/approach – The research is based on an international literature review and a limited number of semi‐structured interviews with social housing PPP participants in England, the USA and Australia. These interviews were conducted by Dr Gilmour as part of his doctoral research in 2008.Findings – The familiar distinction between social and other forms of infrastructure PPPs has been found to be unhelpful in the case of public housing renewal. This type of PPPs, through their cross‐subsidisation model, face relatively high revenue risk during a recession. However, the commitment of the public sector to the social goals of such projects suggests contract negotiation rather than default is likely if problems occur. PPP ris...

‘It depends what you mean by the term rights’: strata termination and housing rights

Abstract Strata title was introduced in Australia over 50 years ago and offered a legal mechanism for space to be vertically subdivided and traded. Importantly, it allowed individualised property rights to be applied to multi-unit housing. In New South Wales, recent changes to the Strata Scheme Development Act allow termination of strata schemes with less than unanimous support of owners. A central feature of the discussion surrounding the implementation of these changes was to question the rights associated with ownership of strata. This paper presents findings from key-informant interviews undertaken in the lead up to the reforms to the NSW legislation governing strata termination. Analysis of these interviews demonstrates the complex ways in which property rights are understood in relation to strata termination within the broader context of housing. This paper argues that successful implementation of the new legislation impacting upon property rights in strata will require concerted engagement with wider social concepts and understanding of housing within the Australian community.

For the City? The Difficult Spaces of Market Restructuring Policy

Abstract Market restructuring policies have proved controversial and been subject to academic critique on a number of fronts. This paper considers the role that the inherent spatial tensions captured within these initiatives have played, both in terms of their troubled implementation but more specifically in how aspects of the conceptual debates surrounding their nature and intent have been framed. In particular, I focus on assertions that such programmes, in their alignment to housing market geographies, and an analytical discourse that relates the ‘parts’ to the ‘whole’ across subregional, metropolitan spaces, were ‘for the city (or, rather, the urban elites that govern cities)’ (Allen, 2010). While such positions have appropriately reasserted the disjuncture between the ‘space of positions’ of households and those of housing markets, they risk ceding consideration of the competing importance of ‘more-than-local’ spaces in terms of shaping and addressing other equity concerns. They have also firmly aligned the role of urban policy, ‘state’ intervention and practice with elite imperatives. In working through these spatial tensions, I draw upon recent critical perspectives – including Right to the City debates – to reflect upon the challenge of keeping open our engagement and commitment to citywide geographies as part of negotiating the continual and ongoing tensions across different spatial scales.