News

08/03/09

Social Housing radio interview

Ken Marchingo's ABC Radio National Breakfast interview with Fran Kelly

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07/29/09

A vision and plan for social housing in Australia

A vision and plan for social housing in Australia - Ken Marchingo, chairman PowerHousing Australia to announce the release of a vision and plan for social housing in Australia

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07/28/09

Bankwest report highlights the need for key worker housing nationally

Seven out of Eight Australian Capital Cities are too Expensive for Emergency Workers and Teachers

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07/29/08

Powerhousing Inaugural Conference Announced

The Powerhousing Australia Inaugural Conference for Adelaide.

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05/30/08

PowerHousing Australia participated in a Housing Exchange in London

Chairman of PowerHousing Australia Ken Marchingo participated in a Housing Exchange in London in April of this year

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Services

PowerHousing Australia delivers a range of services targeting low/moderate income individuals and families across Australia including:

» A one-stop-approach to affordable housing opportunities

» Provision of affordable housing in areas of need

» Short & long term housing tenures

» Affordable housing partnerships

Some members also provide:

» Outreach programs

» Pilot programs for Federal Government initiatives (YP4)

: Issue in Aus

Affordable Housing Issues in Australia

The issue of affordable housing is Australia-wide, affecting metropolitan, regional and rural communities.

PowerHousing Australia Federal Government Position Statement

“The Not for Profit Sector providing High-Impact Affordable Housing Solutions in the Federal, State and Local Jurisdictions”

Housing is most Australian’s largest expense. Decent and affordable housing has a demonstrable impact on family stability and the life outcomes fo children. Affordable housing is an indispensable building block of healthy neighbourhoods, and thus shapes the quality of community life.

The housing sector additionally provides a major stimulus to Australia’s economy, consistently generating a significant component of our gross domestic product. Better, affordable housing can lead to better outcomes for individuals, communities and our society as a whole. In other words – housing matters.

The Federal Government has been involved in the creation of affordable housing since the Second World War. Federal support for the housing sector has been very successful for “most” households. For most low to moderate income households in recent years federal efforts have been less than successful.

The most significant housing challenge is affordability, growing in severity as family incomes move down the ladder. Federal and State support for the housing sector has been insufficient to cover growing needs, fill the gaps in availability and affordability, preserve Australia’s public housing stock, and provide sufficient flexibility to craft local solution to problems.

At this current point in time Australia faces a widening gap between the demand for affordable housing and the supply of it. The causes are varied – rising housing production costs in relation to family incomes, inadequate public subsidies, and restrictive zoning practices, local government regulations that discourage affordable housing development and the loss of units from the public housing system across Australia. Rural areas and our indigenous population experience very difficult, complex and long standing problems to increase the supply of affordable housing.

Australia’s housing challenges cannot be described with statistics alone (It is important to note that this statement is not designed to provide a statistical analysis of the problem – there is a mountain of evidence from industry, academia, state and local governments documenting ad nauseam the “problem”)

Housing must be viewed in the context of the community in which it is located. Improvements in housing needs to be linked to improvements in schools, community safety, transportation, and job access.

Success in Federal Government housing policy needs to be evaluated not just according to the number of housing units produced but also in terms of whether the housing produced improves both communities and individual lives.

PowerHousing Australia members believe that all levels of government have a much broader role to play in the seeking to address the nation’s housing challenges.

In fulfilling this roles the Federal Government need to seek answers to some basic questions as follows:

What is the importance of housing, particularly affordable housing to Australia’s infrastructure?
Is Australia getting the housing outcomes it expects and desires for individuals, families and communities? Are there better ways to meet these needs?
How can the Federal Government increase private sector and non government joint ventures to increase the supply of affordable housing?
Are existing housing programs living up to their potential? Which need reform or significant restructuring?
What are the critical unmet housing needs? Are new programs necessary to address these needs?

In the search for answers to these questions over the last few years there are some consistent ideas expressed in numerous forums all over Australia as follows:

Affordability and lack of decent housing are a growing problem, particularly for low-income families
Housing must be financially and physically sustainable for the long term
Housing issues are predominantly local issues, and programs must reflect the variations from state to state and community to community
Housing exists in a broader community context, and programmes must reflect the relation and impact of housing on education, economic opportunity and transportation
Private Sector and non government partnerships in the production of affordable housing must be increased
Mixed income housing is generally preferable to affordable housing that concentrates and isolates poor families (overwhelmingly the issue with current supply of public housing throughout Australia)
There remains and ongoing requirement for federal government legislation and funding programmes to make affordable housing a vital part of the ladder of economic opportunity
A National congruence between existing housing programmes is essential
Homeownership counselling is necessary to make homeownership programmes work well for low income families

As stated at the start of this document we identified that we were not on about quantitative analysis (this has been done to death in terms of “paralysis by analysis” at state and local level for many years). Instead this paper presents a new vision for our nation’s affordable housing sector.

To achieve this new vision PowerHousing Australia members recommend the following:

That the links between affordable housing and the community in which it is located be strengthened
That authority and responsibility for making decisions about affordable housing be jointly vested in the Federal government, State and Local Governments and include affordable housing developers and providers
That joint venture vehicles between non government affordable housing providers and private enterprise be the preferred model to increase the supply of affordable housing throughout Australia
.That all affordable housing be designed, financed, and managed to be sustainable over the long term (in contrast to the current long term and intractable sustainability issues confronting public housing throughout Australia)

A summary of PowerHousing Australia’s principal recommendations follows. These recommendations are divided into three categories new federal initiatives, major reforms of existing programmes and streamlining of existing programmes. The key principles that inform our recommendations are the strengthening of communities, devolving decision making, increasing the involvement of the non government sector and private enterprise partnerships, and ensuring sustainability informs all our recommendations. PowerHousing Australia’s 21 members represent more than 250 years between them of experience in delivering affordable housing solutions throughout Australia – this experience drives and informs our recommendations as follows:

New Initiatives

Create a “Federal Government Innovative Affordable Housing Supply Fund”

PowerHousing Australia recommends that the Federal Government “get in the game” by providing in 2007/2008 significant funding into the “Federal Government Innovative Affordable Housing Supply Fund”. This fund would be targeted to delivery of supply through innovative partnerships between the non government sector and private enterprise. It could be administered by State Governments regulatory bodies already in place to monitor the community housing sector.

Every house built (we guarantee that house would be built within 12 months of the funds being release to our members (if we were successful in responding to EOI’s. In other words from a Federal Government stand every dollar could be identified and every house built and every happy tenant (and some times every proud home owner) could be identified as a direct recipient of Federal Government investment in affordable housing.

Provide Capital subsidies for the production of housing units for extremely low income households
Set federal targets for a new mixed income, multi family rental production programme
Facilitate strategic community development by empowering state and local government to blend funding streams

Major Reforms

Transform the Public housing System Nationally
Revitalise and restructure the CSHA
End chronic homelessness
Streamlining of Existing Programmes

Home ownership is often cited as the Australian dream, yet the property market boom of recent years and rising interest rates means housing affordability in all tenures is at all time low and is currently at unsustainable levels (well above OECD levels).

Some three million Australian households on low and middle incomes currently rent, and have little or no hope of buying.

In many cases the lack of affordable housing is acting as a brake on employment and industry - particularly in regional areas - contributing to economic calcification.

There is currently a $60 billion capacity in the public housing marketplace that is currently not being leveraged, $10 billion of which is in the community housing sector.

PowerHousing is positioning itself to become the core provider of affordable housing services ot the development sector. The opportunities are there for governments to take leadership by partnering with the organisations identified as growth providers of affordable housing.