Housing for People, not Profit

With the price of housing at record highs, the only people who benefit from the current situation are property investors. In metropolitan Adelaide, the average price of a house is $847,000 and in regional South Australia it is $460,000. 

In South Australia, the cost of buying housing has increased by about 73.2 per cent since March 2020. 

We need to increase supply, but we also need to provide access to some of the 81,000 vacant houses that are available across South Australia. 

The Greens will introduce measures to make more housing affordable, and for more people. First is mandating a minimum of 30 percent affordable and public housing, across the entire state using state planning legislation. In these changes to legislation, all large developments would be required to include:

10 per cent social housing (public housing and/or community housing) 10 per cent affordable to buy 10 per cent affordable to rent

In South Australia, over 14,000² people are on the public housing waitlist, while the state government has committed to building just 430 new public homes in this term. We need to catch up by eliminating the public housing wait list and planning for new stock for future generations³. 

The SA Housing Authority’s maintenance backlog is estimated at approximately $310m⁴. 

Over the last 20 years, South Australia has lost over 20,000 social housing dwellings while the waitlist has stayed stagnant for over five years and people are forced to sleep in tents, couch surf or sleep rough⁵. 

The Greens will build 20,000 public homes over the next four years to eliminate the public housing waitlist, and plan for future demand.

<sup>2. Source: SACOSS as at 30 June 2024
3. Source: Shelter SA 2022 https://www.sheltersa.asn.au/site/wp-content/uploads/Shelter-SA-Election-Platform-2022-Final.pdf
4. https://sacoss.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/SACOSS-Budget-Sub-2024-25_Final-1.pdf
5. https://www.sheltersa.asn.au/site/wp-content/uploads/Disruption.pdf</sup>

The Greens will advocate for the establishment of a publicly owned builder to undertake construction of new public and affordable homes and to complete construction of homes when private building companies collapse. Currently, the housing system relies on contracts with private developers to address housing demand, including some affordable and social housing within private projects.

In South Australia, we’ve seen the collapse of prominent companies Qattro Built, Felmeri Homes and Wake Concepts⁶ which has left people with unfinished houses, scrambling to find another builder willing to finish construction. 

Recently the Labor Government rebranded the SA Housing Trust to restore its name but not its mission as a public builder.

The South Australian Housing Trust used to build homes for tens of thousands of South Australian workers. At its peak, SAHT was building 47 percent of all new residential dwellings in South Australia per year, the equivalent of 7,000 homes per year today⁷. 

Rather than relying on private contractors, a public builder would construct public and affordable housing where it’s needed most and provide maintenance to the homes it builds and to existing public and social housing. When private construction companies go bust, the public builder could step in to ensure that planned and partially completed homes are still finished. 

There is international precedent for public ownership of building companies. Germany for instance has two publicly owned housing construction companies (Gewobag and Bayernheim). Gewobag also acquires existing homes and undeveloped plots of land for conversion to public housing. Turkey also has a publicly owned housing construction company (TOKİ) focused on large scale social housing projects toward the middle- and low-income categories⁸.

The Singapore Housing and Development Board is responsible for planning and carrying out the construction, maintenance and upgrading of public housing. Almost 80 per cent of Singapore’s residents live in public housing.

<sup>6. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-20/third-sa-builder-wake-concepts-collapses/102881020
7. Shelter SA https://www.sheltersa.asn.au/site/wp-content/uploads/Disruption.pdf
8. https://www.robertsimms.org.au/a_public_builder_for_sa</sup>

The construction industry in South Australia is the third biggest employer in the state, representing 8.4 per cent of the workforce. However, women represent only 5.5 per cent of the workforce in South Australia, which is less than 11.3 per cent of women who make up the Australian construction workforce⁹.

To encourage more women in construction, the Greens will introduce mandatory gender equality targets for any construction company or builder that bids for government contracts. The targets will set out that women must represent half of the workforce of the business undertaking procurement. This has had success in Western Australia under the Gender Equality in Procurement Pilot¹⁰.

<sup>9. https://www.simple.com.au/work/women-in-construction
10. https://www.wa.gov.au/government/publications/gender-equality-procurement</sup>

Our entire financial system is designed for people to spend their lives working to pay off their home, then stay in this property once children have grown up and moved out. Owning a large home generally doesn't impact someone's ability to access the Age Pension, but there might be financial consequences if they decide the downsize and sell the family home once the extra living space is no longer needed. The South Australian Greens will ensure that the state-based taxation system provides incentives for older people to downsize to smaller, easier-to-maintain properties, in order to optimise our housing supply.

South Australian rent prices have continued to spiral out of control, while the number of properties available to rent has made the market become too competitive for many renters.

The latest data shows that 81,000 homes are sitting vacant while renters are struggling to find a place to call home.

In the middle of a housing crisis, allowing dwellings to remain vacant is driving up prices and making it harder for people to find a home. In Victoria, they apply a 1% tax on the value of vacant property which increases each year when the property is vacant. 

The Greens will introduce a tax at the rate of 1% of the total value of the vacant property if it is vacant for more than 6 consecutive months. 

Exemptions will apply where there has been a genuine attempt to sell the property or the property has remained vacant for a valid reason. 

Short term rental properties are being treated as an income source, but without any usual regulations for businesses. The Greens will establish a register for short-term rentals as was recommended by a recent Parliamentary Inquiry into the sector. 

This register would provide vital data that would allow for further policy settings, such as a cap on the number of short-term rental properties, increased rates or levies, and other regulations.

Stamp duty, a tax that people pay when they buy property, adds thousands of dollars to the cost of moving, and is one of the biggest barriers to moving house. This leads to people holding onto their house, even as their needs change and they might otherwise downsize or move to a different area and free up housing, especially for first home buyers. 

The Greens will abolish stamp duty and replace this with an annual flat land tax. This would make moving easier and spread the tax burden more fairly. Some researchers have suggested that Australian households could be financially better off by about $1,600 per household per year¹¹.

In addition to abolishing stamp duty and introducing a broad-based land tax, the SA Greens have a plan to:

• Make mining companies pay their fair share in royalties.
• Introduce a South Australian big bank levy.
• Cut wasteful government spending on advertising for itself.

By taxing big corporations and investing in our institutions like the Housing Trust, the Greens will ensure that every South Australian can have a place to call home.

^{11. https://theconversation.com/replacing-stamp-duty-with-a-land-tax-could-save-home-buyers-big-money-heres-how-251472}