Tony Dalton

Housing prices and policy dilemmas: a peculiarly Australian problem?

House price inflation has a long tradition in Australia. By international standards the current housing boom is ‘world class’; Australia, along with Britain, heads the OECD league table for house price increases. This article first describes the boom in Australian house prices, distinguishing the differences across geographic and dwelling type sub‐markets. The drivers behind these changes are then discussed, ranging from short‐term factors like interest rate levels and investor behaviour to longer‐term factors like economic growth and demographic change. Institutional influences, notably tax regimes and land‐use planning regulations, are also addressed. The article then considers the tendentious but timely question—‘is Australia experiencing a speculative housing investment bubble and, if so, will it burst?’ The article goes on to consider what the consequences or costs might be, in terms of the broader issues of macroeconomic policy.

Housing policy retrenchment: Australia and Canada compared

Housing policy has declined in importance relative to other areas of state policy-making in many Western countries. This paper seeks to understand why this has happened at a time when there has been a decline in the level of housing affordability and supply of affordable rental housing. It presents an argument that a way of understanding this policy retrenchment, through a comparative analysis of Australian and Canadian housing systems, is to consider the way in which housing policy problems are defined, how policy-making capacity is institutionalised in state agencies and the form and extent of civil society mobilisation on housing issues. It is not sufficient to ascribe the declining salience of housing policy to the ascendancy of neo-liberal ideas in policy-making.

A wasting resource: public housing and drug use in inner‐city Melbourne

Public housing is one of few sources of low‐income rental housing in inner‐city Melbourne, Australia. Most of this housing is easily identifiable high‐rise estates. Some of these estates have become established centres of heroin dealing and drug use. This has had significant consequences: applicants reject offers of housing on the estates; tenants apply for transfers; and housing officers face workplace occupational health and safety issues. In sum, the presence of the drug trade is undermining the provision of affordable, well‐located public housing. This paper contributes to discussions that seek to restore the value of this common resource. It does so by drawing on qualitative interviews and focus groups conducted with heroin users who live in and/or use public housing. The experience of these individuals gives insight into the current relationship between the illicit drug trade and public housing, as well as some understanding of the resilience of the illicit drug trade. The paper looks at measures that have been implemented to address this problem, before questioning whether there is room for an innovative, regulatory response to illicit drug use.

Welfare to Work in Australia: Disability Income Support, Housing Affordability and Employment Incentives

Abstract Internationally, considerable policy attention is being paid to increasing the employment participation of disabled working-age people. Like other OECD countries, Australia has experienced growth in the number of Disability Support Pension (DSP) recipients due to changes in industry structure and increases in precarious employment. This history is well-rehearsed in policy debates. However, little research attention has been given to the housing circumstances of DSP recipients. This is important, particularly when we note the increasing incidence of working-age DSP recipients in the private rental market and public housing. For public renters the incidence has more than tripled to 27 per cent over the period 1982–2002. This paper addresses two questions: ‘What are the housing circumstances of DSP recipients?’ and ‘What are the likely consequences of programme changes aimed at increasing employment participation of DSP recipients?’ Using Australia as an example, this article considers interactions between the new disability payment system being implemented through Welfare to Work, housing costs and employment income.

Transition to low carbon? An analysis of socio-technical change in housing renovation

Across the westernised world, concerns about climate change and resource scarcity point to the need for widescale changes in housing renovation. Through the exploration of social interactions of eco-renovation businesses on the ground, the paper presents evidence for the emergence of an ‘eco-renovation niche’ consisting of both traditional and new types of housing industry businesses. However, this niche is not clearly bounded, stable or homogenous, and so generalised ideas about how it may grow in scale or size are problematic. Niche participants typically wish to stay small. Also, complex household relations are involved, and hands-on experimentation is a feature of the industry participants. For policy purposes, this suggests a need to focus on strategic intermediaries in industry and professional associations, licensing bodies and regulators, who could in turn support programmes that more adequately recognise the modus operandi of the industry, households and civil society organisations.

‘A dead and broken system?’: ‘insider’ views of the future role of Australian public housing

The Australian government has recently made explicit its intent to reduce its funding commitment to public housing and instead resource the community sector to provide new low-cost rental housing. This article explores the causes and future implications that arise from this policy switch based on analysis of interviews with senior policy-makers and professionals working in the sector within the Australian federal system of government. The focus of the article is on their understandings of the problems facing the public housing system and the opportunities and constraints they identify as important in their work aimed at continued provision of public housing and its improved viability. The article provides a diagnosis of the public housing problem, a discussion of the conduct of government and the future options for the sector, including stock transfer and a new regulatory framework. In the conclusion, the example of Australia is discussed in the light of recent international literature on government reforms shaping public housing provision. We argue that recent developments in Australia aiming to diversify the existing housing stock is best understood in the context of wider shifts in governance and welfare reform.

Home ownership into the new millennium: A view from the margin

Abstract The late 1990s saw the beginnings of a decline in Australias high rate of home ownership. This trend, especially among younger people, appears to be driven by a complex of economic, social and demographic forces. The paper looks at this development from one specific viewpoint: the phenomenon of mortgage default. Recent data suggests a rise in the number of people falling into arrears on their mortgages, in some cases to the point of default. The paper surveys this outcome and analyses the factors responsible. Data drawn from the experiences of a state government mortgage lender is used to test the factors isolated in the literature as significant in this respect.

Low carbon, water-efficient house retrofits: an emergent niche?

Rising carbon and water footprints of housing present a significant policy challenge across the Westernized world, and this has led to a growing range of government policies and programmes designed to promote greater residential energy and water efficiency. An analysis of low carbon/energy renovations is presented based on interviews with homeowner renovators and project managers in Australia. The renovators included self-declared ‘green renovators’ and other, more typical ‘general’ renovators. The project managers included a range of builders, designers, coordinators and retrofitters who provided specialized low carbon/water renovation services. Using the idea of niches and multilayer perspective (MLP), the analysis reveals both the limits to government initiatives promoting low carbon/water renovations and the importance of aspirations and relations in the low carbon/water housing renovation niche. The use of deep enquiry using semi-structured interviews reveals a detailed picture of these relations that cross the ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ sides of housing renovation. These relations reveal interdependence and tensions that profoundly shape low carbon/water renovations. Such relations should be explicitly accounted for in the design of government programmes and regulations.

The Impacts of the Global Financial Crisis on Housing and Mortgage Markets in Australia: A View from the Vulnerable

Housing markets are at the centre of the recent global financial turmoil. In this well-researched study, a multidisciplinary group of leading analysts explores the impact of the crisis within, and between, countries.

Another Suburban Transition? Responding to Climate Change in the Australian Suburbs

This chapter considers the idea of destabilising the current high-carbon regime and establishing the preconditions for a new sociotechnical regime in Australian suburban cities. It does this in the following four sections. The first section argues that cities can be the site of sociotechnical regimes. In this case, the focus is on the suburbs as a sociotechnical regime within Australian cities. The second section describes the pattern of direct and indirect household energy consumption in large metropolitan cities, which are overwhelmingly suburban cities. This urban/suburban location of high energy-intensive household living is an integral element of the high-carbon sociotechnical regime. The third section argues that the underlying ‘lock-in mechanisms’ producing and reproducing the suburbs have at times been destabilised and reconfigured. It is important to understand what made the new ‘lock-in mechanisms’ viable because this can inform strategic thinking about future change. The fourth section draws a set of preconditions from the history of change in ‘lock-in mechanisms’ that should be considered in the development of transition to low-carbon suburban suburbs. It presents them at three levels – macro, meso and micro – as a means for clarifying the way different types of power is exercised in the making and remaking of energy intensive suburbs. The challenge is how might households live in and remake their cities while they continue to be suburban so that they are more sustainable.