Vivienne Milligan

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.

Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom: Innovation and Diversity in Australian Not-for-Profit Housing Organisations

Australian social housing policy continues to move away from a traditional hierarchical public housing model. The small but fast growing not-for-profit sector has expanded through the introduction of private finance, a tax credit scheme, stock transfers, planning incentives and an economic stimulus package. This article examines the diverse ways in which the leading not-for-profit providers in Australia have responded to these opportunities, using the concept of organisational hybridity. Coverage of hybridity includes both established housing providers and emergent third sector organisations including finance consolidators, development consortia and cross-subsidisation vehicles. Using information from interviews, organisational case studies and documentation, this paper assesses the drivers for the growth of hybridity in Australia. The policy implications for governments steering a diverse housing sector through promoting hybrid organisations are discussed, and reflections are provided on the opportunities and limitations of using hybridity analytical frameworks. An issue to emerge from the analysis is the diversity of organisational forms, financing models and strategic orientation of hybrid organisations promoted through the same policy settings.

Secure occupancy: a new framework for analysing security in rental housing

Unlike debates about security for owner occupiers which recognise that security is complex and multi-layered, security for renters is often presented as single dimensional and conflated with de jure security of tenure, deriving from a property rights perspective. This article proposes a broader concept of ‘secure occupancy’ to enable a more nuanced understanding of security for tenants. A new framework is developed to enable investigation of the dynamic interactions between legislation/regulation, housing market conditions, public policies and cultural norms around renting, which shape security of occupancy for tenants. The paper illustrates this approach, drawing on a study of the rental systems of nine developed countries, identifying key factors that appear to have a strong bearing on strengthening, and weakening, of security of occupancy for renter households. The article concludes that this approach has the potential to deepen understanding of security for renters and to stimulate new avenues for research.

New dawn or chimera? Can institutional financing transform rental housing?

Mainly stimulated by concerns over inadequate housing supply, both the UK and Australia have recently seen renewed policy-maker interest in channelling ‘institutional investment’ into rental housebuilding. This has coincided with the recognition that – as seen in both countries – ongoing changes in the demographics of expanding private rental sectors reinforce the need for new forms of provision.Drawing on recent ‘informed stakeholder’ perspectives in both countries, we build on existing accounts through our analysis of barriers to institutional financing of rental housing and our investigation of what, if any, fundamental changes in market conditions and investor sentiment have recently occurred, so that such obstacles might potentially be overcome. Further developing this story, we compare and contrast recent ‘policy reform’ recommendations proposed in both countries with the aim of stimulating institutional investment in housebuilding.Although impediments to large-scale institutional funding for rental housing remain substantial, we conclude that, should it take off, such financing could significantly affect the structure and quality of provision – especially via the involvement of not-for-profit landlords.

Affordable Housing Strategies

This article is concerned with the institutional context of strategies to provide housing to meet the needs of those whose incomes are insufficient to obtain appropriate housing in the housing market otherwise. It describes a variety of approaches that have been adopted to providing affordable housing and identifies the roles and contributions of different institutions across the housing system, covering governments, private agencies, not-for-profit organisations, and intermediaries. Characteristics of the historic and contemporary contributions of each of these institutional groups to the provision of affordable housing are described, with examples from a range of countries and regions.

Policies to Support Access and Affordability of Housing

This article begins with a brief overview of the factors that have contributed to problems of access and affordability. This is followed by a rationale for policies that improve access and affordability, which highlights their impact on individual households and on the economy as a whole. A taxonomy of the policies that are possible (and an indication of where these are used) gives insight into the diverse range of direct and indirect forms of assistance that can be provided through demand- and supply-side assistance as well as through regulation. The penultimate section discusses the context in which different types of policies might be effective in achieving their objectives. The final section highlights the importance of evaluating these policies against a broad rather than narrow range of objectives.

State directed hybridity? – the relationship between non-profit housing organizations and the state in three national contexts

Abstract This paper presents results from the first international comparative study of non-profit housing organizations in Australia, England and the Netherlands to engage with panels of organizational leaders. The study uses a ‘modified Delphi method’ with Likert-type scaled surveys, followed by in-depth interviews. The paper introduces the concept of hybridity as a way of understanding the interaction of state, market and community drivers in steering non-profit housing organizations. In all three countries, findings indicate that there are clear limits to independence from continued state influence. In England this takes the form of state-directed cross-subsidy and welfare reform, in Australia business development strategies have had to respond to volatility and reductions in state funding, while in the Netherlands public policy has recently restricted the remit of associations to a low-income niche and reduced commercial involvement. These findings lend support to ‘contested logics’ models of organizational hybridity rather than either ‘out-of-control monstrous hybrids’ or linear privatization models.

Building Australia's affordable housing industry: capacity challenges and capacity-enhancing strategies

ABSTRACT As in many other nations, Australias intensifying shortage of affordable housing represents one of the most pressing policy challenges for government. Against a backdrop of ongoing population growth, the 20-year virtual moratorium on public housing construction means that, by 2016, the gross social housing provision deficit had reached 140,000 dwellings. And, while largely frozen in scale, the countrys public housing system has also become increasingly residualised and rundown. In tackling these twin problems, some policy-makers and advocates have invested hopes in an emerging non-government affordable housing industry, largely configured around not-for-profit community housing providers. For some government players, however, the sectors nascent status and therefore ‘restricted capacity’ has been judged a crucial limitation on the extent to which it can be reasonably delegated responsibility for easing national housing stress. Applying a system-minded conception of the ‘affordable housing industry’ and adopting a multidimensional ‘capacity’ framework, this research investigated the factors limiting the scope for the industrys further expansion. In highlighting industry capacity restrictions stemming from the hollowing-out of government and its institutions, our findings connect with a wider policy studies literature and will have resonance in many countries beyond Australia – particularly in the Anglophone world.

A Review of “Housing Policy Reforms in Post-Socialist Europe: Lost in Transition”

This book takes a comparative method and applies it for the first time to an analysis of the contemporary housing situation of a regional grouping of countries in South-East Europe. The central concern is the restructuring of housing systems in the context of the remarkable transition from central-planned to market-based economies that has occurred across Central and Eastern Europe from the early 1990s. Tsenkova begins (Chapter 1) by situating her study within the convergence/ divergence theoretical debate in comparative housing research, which is concerned with the extent to which similar countries develop similar housing systems. Her stated aim is to test the validity of differing explanations of how housing systems and housing policies develop and change. Her worthy laboratory is eight neighbouring countries: Albania, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Romania, the Republic of Moldova, Serbia and Montenegro, which have all undergone rapid transition recently from essentially socialist housing policies and systems to market-based systems with market enabling housing policies. To ground her analysis of the housing systems of these countries, the author next provides two well-referenced chapters on contextual influences. Chapters 2 and 3 respectively give the reader a regional overview of the historic socialist housing legacy in this region and the broader political and economic reforms, of which systemic housing sector reform has been one part. Following this essential scene setting, the middle chapters of the book, Chapters 4 to 9, present the qualitative and quantitative examination of the policies, institutions and performance of the housing systems of the eight countries. The analysis in these chapters is presented thematically. As each chapter covers different information on all the countries, a comparative picture is build up serially. The main themes that are explored in these empirical chapters have been derived from the conceptual literature on the structure of housing systems and the determinants of housing outcomes (reviewed in Chapter 1) and the particular features of housing systems in the study countries (discussed in Chapter 2). Themes that are covered in greatest depth include: how the institutional and legal frameworks that support housing markets are developing (Chapter 4); the kinds of new market-enabling