2023-03-01
The Post-War UK Council Estates provided decent homes for very large numbers of working-class people. The Greens current campaign to build 275,000 social housing units and strengthen renter’s rights has much in common with that UK example.
By Rob Delves, Green Issue Co-editor
Let me tell you about my friend Mike. It’s a story from a time of much less wealth but fairer and more secure living. Mike was one of four children growing up in Nottingham in the 1950s. The UK was still struggling to rebuild from the devastation of WWII, but had committed to a social democracy that would deliver for everyone at least the basic essentials of a good life, above all the Big Three: free education from kindergarten to university, free healthcare, affordable housing.
This last was mainly achieved via the planned Council Estates. The home provided for Mike’s family ‒ and millions like them ‒ was firstly affordable, the rent pegged to the family income (his dad repaired and maintained railway tracks). It was (also like millions of others) a three bedroom, two-storey semi-detached. It was well-built, but basic, the rooms certainly small by modern standards.
In my opinion, the real stroke of genius was that these Council Estates were deliberately planned to house as broad a cross-section of the population as possible. They were the very opposite of ghettos of the most deprived and destitute. They certainly provided a home for people in deepest need, but the mix included people from all walks of life, well at least all walks of working-class life. Above all, it was secure – it was their home for as long as they needed it.
The combination of reasonable union-negotiated wages, low rent, free healthcare and schooling, meant that their father’s income was enough for all six of them to eat well, have decent clothes (okay, the three boys needed only one medium-sized wardrobe for “all” their stuff) and enjoy a few “beyond the basics” experiences such as visits to the movies and a one-week annual holiday sitting on a North Wales beach in the rain (free rail travel was one of his dad’s perks).
Bright, argumentative lad – in the late 1960s he went to Cambridge where he mixed with the rich and privileged and almost became a classic example of a working-class lad benefitting hugely from welfare state generosity and then being bought by “the system.” His first job was with the Housing Association, where he was well paid for being a successful, aggressive advocate for big private developers, who vehemently opposed everything his Labour-Union family had grown up supporting, such as keeping public land for everyone to enjoy and giving public housing projects (not private developments) priority access to new land opened for housing. Maybe the system didn’t try quite hard enough, or maybe there was enough working-class solidarity conscience left after four years of Cambridge and two of big business. He became a teacher and kept voting Labour, though post-Blair I’d argue that Labour is closer to Housing Association selfish Neoliberalism than to 1950s egalitarian social democracy.
My takeaway from Mike’s story is obvious: if war-ravaged Britain could afford decent, affordable, secure homes for all, what’s stopping 2020s Australia, one of the wealthiest countries in the world at the wealthiest time in world history? Yes, what’s stopping us?
Well, a few obvious things. From about 1980, the dominance of the Neoliberal belief that private enterprise is always more efficient and free markets deliver better results has meant that public housing has been virtually abandoned and private home ownership has come to be seen as just about the best wealth-generating asset ever invented. A raft of policies were implemented to ensure that owners were the priority and property prices nearly always rose year on year, on occasions at stunning rates. Very yummy if you bought into the market nice and early, like 40 to 60 years ago when houses were affordable – typically only two or at most three times the median wage. In 1971, as a third year teacher on $4,500 per year, I bought an inner Melbourne terrace for $10,250. It’s probably valued at more than a million now, so I’m guessing few third-year teachers are buying into that street. Well done, Neoliberalism.
Ultra-yummy if you managed to grab more than one, especially when the double gifts from heaven of Negative Gearing and the 50% Capital Gains Tax Discount were introduced – billions of public money flowing to the Housing Haves to subsidise their wealth-generating housing investments. But it’s misery for the millions of Housing Have-Nots who are priced out of home ownership, faced with unbearably long waiting lists for the hugely-neglected public housing sector and therefore at the mercy of the private rental market, where asking prices severely strain the budgets of most lower- or even median-income earners and the landlords have all the power.
How did the (mostly Coalition) governments since 1975 continue to get elected with such manifestly unfair housing and taxation policies? I think part of the answer is that a large chunk of those currently over-55 – a huge voting block – have done well from this system. John Howard often boasted when challenged about house prices rising much faster than wages that he’d never come across anyone who’s said to him: “John, I’m really unhappy about the way that the value of my home keeps going up.” Many over-55s believe the system is the best-of-all-possible worlds because it has worked well for them and so why shouldn’t it work for everyone else, especially if those born since the 1980s just worked harder and didn’t waste money on smashed avocado, night clubs, smart phones … add your favourite imagined youth indulgence.
This is the voting block that overwhelmingly votes Coalition. They’re not going to vote for ending the many perks enacted since the 1980s, such as Negative Gearing, Capital Gains Tax Discount, Superannuation tax concessions and Franking Credits – this last was something I’d never heard of till the 2019 election, but cause many of my friends and colleagues to froth with rage that Labor could even think of ending them. Makes me wonder how I’ve reached such a ripe age and never tasted their wonders. They’re now on my Bucket List, for sure: Experience Kakadu, Uluru, Niagara Falls in a barrel, Franking Credits.
So, what’s the solution, apart from the probably unethical “Hurry Up And Die, Boomers”. The Greens believe there are two broad approaches to solving the housing crisis and are campaigning hard on both of them.
The first approach is a raft of measures to provide a much better deal for renters, essentially regulating the private rental market to make it more affordable, secure and with decent minimal standards. There are five regulatory changes that are widely discussed in progressive circles. Some are already being implemented at least partially in some states:
- Ban rent bidding (“I’ll offer you $50 per week above the asking price…”).
- Enforce landlord compliance with minimum building standards. The Greens put more depth to this measure, for example demanding disability access, energy efficiency and environmental sustainability standards.
- Allow tenants to make alterations, for example vegetable gardens, painting walls, putting in picture hooks.
- Allow pets as a matter of right (onus is on the landlord to establish reasonable grounds for refusing pets).
- More secure leases, specifically put an end to “no grounds evictions” clauses in rental agreements.
As far as I’m aware, all five are supported by The Greens. However, our support for renters goes much further and includes the following:
- Boost funding for tenants’ advocacy services by $30 million per year to improve access to independent information, advice and advocacy.
- A rent freeze for two years.
- Double the amount of Commonwealth Rent Assistance.
- Give tenants the option of European Style long-term leasing.
The second approach is to create a large public-sector alternative for renters – the specific commitment is to build 275,000 affordable social housing units over the next five years. I see this as essentially seeking to recreate the best of the Council Estate system that was so crucial to the health and welfare of Mike’s family back in the immediate Post-War decades. This is a more substantial solution to the many problems that beset housing in Australia. However, it will take several years for the building program to make a difference, whereas the measures to achieve a better deal for renters could be put in place very quickly indeed.
So, both approaches are essential and complement each other to produce a response to the housing crisis that all Greens members and supporters should champion. In essence, The Greens policies can be seen as primarily about reducing, even eliminating, the huge and shameful security gap that has developed as a result of deliberate policies over more than 40 years now. Home ownership provides a strong sense of housing security, the ability to make the place your home and put down roots in your community, whereas renting provides almost none of these essential citizen rights.
Restoring a strong public housing sector has the added benefit of widening the choice of housing options beyond just private ownership and private rental. In fact, we should go further and seek to expand other alternatives such as local Housing Associations. One successful option that I haven’t heard discussed in Greens circles is the Singapore model. My (very long) one sentence summary: Nearly a million Singaporeans have bought homes through a government agency, the Housing Development Board (HBD), which provides substantial subsidies to make home ownership more affordable but places limits on the owners’ rights, especially their freedom to sell – they must wait five years before they can sell and then only to someone who qualifies under the HBD system.
In 1980s Britain, Margaret Thatcher also encouraged home purchase by Council Estate tenants but in a very different way. Her policy was to allow people to buy the Council House they had been renting at a discount price. Hundreds of thousands became home owners on the cheap and rewarded her with their votes, but what that really meant was hundreds of thousands of homes were removed from the public housing sector – and of course, very few new ones were built. The best features of the Council House system were destroyed. By contrast, in Singapore, the homes remain the property of the HDB, but the residents enjoy most of the important benefits of home ownership.
I encourage people to research this Singapore model and reflect on whether it could be introduced here, probably not totally but at least in some form. Some other success stories are also worth researching – Vienna is one standout example. But above all, I encourage people to get involved in The Greens Housing Campaign. Homes For All is such an important issue and we have a great set of policies on which to campaign.
Header photo: Council housing estate on Deepdale Road, Breightmet, Bolton, UK. Bill Boaden CC
[Opinions expressed are those of the author and not official policy of Greens WA]