If housing was considered a human right, would it fix our housing crisis?

What should we do about our housing crisis?

Here’s how past policymakers viewed housing, citizenship, and economic rights:

“We consider that good quality and equipped housing is not just a need but a right of every citizen – whether housing is rented or purchased, no tenant or buyer should be exploited for excessive profit.”

This was drawn up in 1944 by the Commonwealth Housing Commission.

The Commission had been charged by the wartime Labor Government with finding a way to address Australia’s severe housing shortage and to provide adequate housing for all in the aftermath of the Second World War.

He estimated that this would require, by the end of 1955, the construction of at least 700,000 homes and recommended a major building program.

He said the program could need an additional 35,000 to 45,000 tradespeople and immigration policy should encourage more construction workers to come to Australia.

He despised the way private landlords had historically treated tenants in this country and argued that housing was a right and should cease to be an “investment area” that brought high profits to a minority of landowners.

It recommended that large numbers of government-funded housing be built for sale and rental to low-income households, with the weekly rent no more than one-sixth of the family income.

He said we needed to put Australians into homes, and those homes needed to be affordable and adequate – not sites of exploitation for profit.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Well, last week NSW Housing Minister Rose Jackson said we need to treat housing as a “fundamental human right” if we are to solve our current housing crisis.

The slow realization of the “Australian dream”

You can read this 1944 report here.

It is a time capsule that reflects the aspirations of housing reformers of this period in history.

Although many of its recommendations were ignored, it served as the basis for the first Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement (CSHA). signed in 1945in which the federal government agreed to fund public housing, and state governments agreed to build and operate these public housing to provide security of tenure for Australians who could not afford to own a home.

Under the terms of this agreement, the federal government hoped to see between 20,000 and 30,000 low-income housing units built in the first year, then 70,000 per year until the postwar housing shortage was overcome. and that all substandard housing be replaced throughout the country.

He felt that it would be necessary about 10 years.

After the Commonwealth Housing Commission published its first interim report, the Curtin Labor government announced plans to launch a post-war housebuilding program.(Courrier Mail, December 8, 1943, page 3)

This first CSHA agreement was followed by renewed housing agreements in 1956, 1961, 1966, 1973, 1978, 1981, 1984 and beyond, as the housing needs of Australians and Commonwealth-State relations grew. evolved over time.

But the second agreement, in 1956, was significantly changed by the Menzies coalition government promote access to private property rather than public rental housing.

He encouraged state governments to sell homes that had been built for rental under the original 1945 CSHA, and he diverted some federal funding from public housing and rental assistance programs to help middle-income earners to buy a house.

At the same time, there was a strong growth in owner-building in Australia, made possible by the large number of prematurely subdivided blocks and vacant subdivisions that lay unused in the major pre-war cities.

Thanks to the combination of these dynamics, the overall level of home ownership increased from 53.4 percent of households in 1947 to 71.4 percent in 1966.

Huge direct government intervention helped create the “Australian Dream” of widespread homeownership.

The “Australian Dream” of home ownership was deliberately created.(Source: Dr Cameron Murray, presentation to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Taxation and Revenue inquiry into housing affordability and supply, September 2021.)

But as the decades passed, the inspiring spirit of that first Housing Commission report faded.

As more public housing was sold in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, waiting lists for public housing grew and low-income families were increasingly pushed into private rental markets only to sink or swimming, with an increase in homelessness.

According to the late Professor Patrick Troy, in the mid-1990s, Australian governments were recreate social conditions this is what led to the call for a national social housing program in the 1940s.

But let’s quickly return to today: Some policymakers are resurrecting some old wisdom to combat our current housing problems.

“Housing should not be seen as a financial asset, but as a fundamental human right,” Ms Jackson said.

“We certainly need our tax system to enable everyone to have secure access to a home before incentivizing a minority to own multiple homes,” the former NSW planning minister said. Rob Stokes, at the same event.

It’s really interesting to see representatives from rival political parties sharing such similar opinions.

Has there been a real change in the political wind?

While we think about it, the old Housing Commission report from 79 years ago raises a few other concerns that are worth considering.

The report’s authors are acutely aware of the damage that can occur to society when house prices rise too quickly, saying that rapidly rising prices place an “undue burden” on younger generations.

They said that for much of Australia’s modern history, interest rates and required initial deposits had prevented many low-income earners from buying a home, leaving them to fend for themselves in markets private rentals where speculative landlords hoped for a high return on their investments, which had obvious consequences for families stuck in the unforgiving rental cycle.

And they said the private sector had repeatedly failed to build adequate housing for low-income groups in Australia, suggesting governments should take responsibility.

In short, they warn that if we view housing as a financial asset rather than a right, we end up with serious social problems.

“The Commission considers that the adequate, healthy, hygienic and efficient housing of the people of the Commonwealth, each in accordance with their social and economic lives, is a national need and should, therefore, cease to be an area of ​​investment generating high profits,” they concluded.