In Inala, one of Brisbane’s most disadvantaged suburbs, single mother Norma is being evicted from her home. Norma, a public housing tenant who appears in the new SBS six-part documentary, Struggle Street series two, refused to kick her daughter out after she was charged with drug offences. “If I was to kick my daughter out, she'd become another number,” Norma says on the show. “Another number on the drugs, another number on the alcohol, incarceration.”
It has been estimated that as many as take place in Australia each year. Some, like Norma, are (affordable public and community housing) tenants who have fallen foul of anti-social behaviour or three strikes policies. In New South Wales, one strike and three strikes policies are now part of the Landlords can issue strikes for minor and moderate like damaging property, bullying and harassment of neighbours, obscene language and loud parties.
Research Fellow at the UNSW City Futures Research Centre, , has reservations about the policy. He explains tenants who want to dispute a strike must do so in writing within a certain period. If they don’t and end up at the tribunal after three warnings, the tenant has no opportunity to challenge the content of the strikes, which are considered proven. “The tenant’s ability to write a good letter is the really crucial thing in these proceedings,” says Martin.
The one strike rule applies to illegal or serious antisocial behaviour such as possession of illicit drugs or unlawful firearms, violence or intimidation. This type of misconduct sees tenants go straight to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal’ which has limited power to exercise discretion in individual cases.
“That sort of regime is worrying,” says Martin, who believes that in some cases the tribunal should consider extenuating circumstances, such as whether it was the tenant who committed the offence, or another person who may have since moved out.
The review raises troubling questions about the way in which tenancy law makes tenants – particularly female tenants – liable for the misconduct of family members and other persons.
In a review of cases conducted by Martin, where the one strike rule would have applied, he found that misconduct was often carried out by someone other than the (usually female) tenant – such as a partner or an adult child. “The review raises troubling questions about the way in which tenancy law makes tenants – particularly female tenants – liable for the misconduct of family members and other persons, with harsh consequences: the loss of a family’s home,” he .
Martin argues that the three strikes policy and the problematic behaviour it addresses are symptoms of a larger crisis in the social housing sector: a chronic supply shortage.
Across the country, . The sector has suffered from insufficient investment for decades, says Martin. “It’s not kept up with the growth of the population. As it has shrunk, because of the way social housing works, it has become more tightly rationed and more targeted to people on very low incomes.”
It’s increasingly common for social housing tenants to have “some other crisis going on in their lives,” says Martin. Social housing developments have become “concentrations of disadvantage” – a far cry from original vision of the estate’s architects.
In the 1960s, the public housing authority in NSW built high rises in the inner-city and large estates on Sydney’s outskirts. At an estate at Mount Druitt in Sydney’s west, 32,000 people lived in 8000 dwellings while Claymore, a suburb of 3,300 residents in Sydney’s south west was built as a public housing estate in the 1970s. “These estates were built for low and moderate income working households,” says Martin. Public housing was offered for sale and many tenants became owner-occupiers. The estates, catering to a “broader clientele”, functioned well.
But as researcher Lucy Groenhart , by the late 1970s, the Commonwealth had dramatically reduced the amount of funding for building and maintaining public housing. “The result of dwindling funds was a shift in the role of public housing, from a mainstream option to marginal sector with a highly disadvantaged tenant base,” she writes.
It was at this point that public housing began to unravel, says Martin. “The difficulty began when we stopped providing enough social housing for a growing population and it became more targeted, and these large monotenural estates became concentrations of people on low incomes with other problems in their lives.”
Forty years after their construction, the ageing estates are as failed , but Martin disagrees with this view. If they operated as they were designed, public housing estates would function much better. “The social experiment was taking public housing stock and only putting very poor people in it who have some sort of crisis going on,” he says. “It’s the tight rationing that is the social experiment, rather than the form.”
Many community housing organisations have demonstrated their ability to deliver successful public housing renewal projects with a mix of households and tenure types.
Today, new social housing developments are integrated into existing neighbourhoods, often in the face of fierce community opposition. Not-for-profit operators have also become a major player in the sector, providing community housing to low-income households. They often do a better job, Martin acknowledges.
One example is , a 104-unit complex in Camperdown opened in 2016 by Mission Australia, an organisation that operates over 1000 community housing properties across Sydney. The development features amenities such as a 24/7 concierge service, on-site tenancy and support services, a gym, community kitchen, art room, computer suite, clinical consultation rooms, roof garden, communal lounge, library, courtyard, barbecue area and secure bicycle storage.
Terry Burke, Professor of Housing Studies at Swinburne University of Technology, is a supporter of the community housing model. “Many community housing organisations have demonstrated their ability to deliver successful public housing renewal projects with a mix of households and tenure types,” he . “They have done so in an integrated and cohesive way, with privately owned units underpinning the financial viability of the projects.”
Martin believes it’s not too late to turn back the clock on public housing policy. He argues that we should open eligibility to allow a broader range of tenants to move in. “You get a greater opportunity for cross-subsidising the system, so you’ve got higher income people paying higher rents and helping to subsidise the system, and their higher income is helping to support a better range of shops and services in their neighbourhoods,” he says. “It takes pressure off neighbourhoods when there’s bit more of a mix.”
Struggle Street series two is produced by KEO Films with funding support from Screen Australia and Film Victoria.
