Housing & Homelessness

Quick-links to sub-sections:

Affordable Housing
Tenants Rights
Adequate and affordable housing must be a priority

Greens make submission to the Inquiry into the Allocation of Social Housing

Affordable Housing

In October 2008, The Greens introduced an Affordable Housing Bill to NSW Parliament. This Bill attempts to amend the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act to allow Councils to ask for affordable housing to be included within new private developments, if there is a need for affordable housing. Councils, if they choose, will be able to impose a levy of up to 25% on a developer, who can supply housing or equivalent value, which a council then must use to provide housing elsewhere in the area.

You can read Sylvia Hale's speech on this Bill

Part 1: http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/PARLMENT/hansart.nsf/V3Key/LC20081030044

Part 2:

http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/V3Key/LC20081113038

Tenants Rights

A fair go for tenants

The government is about to introduce a new Residential Tenancies Act. Read the Greens submission on the review of the Residential Tenancies Act (response to Office of Fair Trading discussion paper #2).

The legislation was promised in 2009, and it now expected to come before Parliament in June 2010. Sylvia Hale and The Greens will be consulting with tenants' organisations when we see the final Bill. Although we believe the new legislation will be fair for tenants, there are still some outstanding issues:

Key issues for the Greens are:
* The lack of boarders and lodgers' rights
* No limit on the amount of rent increase in NSW
* The low vacancy rate and upward pressure on rents means landlords now more than ever have the upper hand over tenants.

Adequate and affordable housing must be a priority

Sylvia wrote to the Federal Minister for Housing, Tanya Plibersek, and the former NSW Minister for Housing, David Borger, to urge the Rudd Government to take meaningful action on housing affordability.

Housing Ministers were meeting in Canberra in December 2008 to finalise a new National Agreement on Affordable Housing.

Economist Ross Gittins nailed it in the Sydney Morning Herald when he pointed out that stoking demand when it outstrips supply only pushes up prices. New social housing built with the stimulus package money will help, as will new affordable rental housing via the National Rental Affordability Scheme.

However Sylvia has also argued that giving out grants such as the First Home Owners' Grant could make house rpices even worse as it stokes demand.  Increasing people’s access to credit or spending power just bids house prices up in a zero-sum game.

Labor in NSW  refused to allow inclusionary zoning for affordable housing beyond a pathetic 3% in new developments such as at the former ADI site at St Mary’s.”

We need to increase the supply of affordable rental properties through a range of measures including increasing funding for new not-for-profit community and public housing, requiring at least 10% of all new housing developments to be set aside for affordable housing and offering tax incentives to increase supply at the lower end of the private rental market.

Ms Hale pointed to a South Australian law setting a target of 15% affordable housing in new developments.

We also need to encourage affordable alternatives to crushing mortgages and unaffordable private rents, such as co-ops, community land trusts and limited equity housing.

What we do have is a taxation regime that encourages speculation in real estate to the detriment of a large section of the population. Negative gearing rewards and assists those who seek to buy a second house at the expense of those who possess no house at all. While investors benefit from the many tax perks available to them, those who are renting pay off the mortgages of investors and, as a result, are unable to save enough for their own home deposit. Even if they can muster a deposit, many cannot afford the repayments, and the longer they save, the further the goalposts are moved as house prices ratchet up.

Clearly we need to look at the whole of housing policy if affordability and security of tenure is going to be addressed.