WA government's $105 million apartment buy-up highlights delicate social housing balance

Australia Broadcast Center

2 days ago

No part of solving Western Australia's housing crisis is easy, but there's little doubt social housing is a particularly curly element.
There's a desperate need for a lot more of it, and very quickly.
The public housing waitlist was 22,315 applications long at the end of May, with many representing multiple people.
Of those, 7,291 urgently need a home.
They might be escaping family and domestic violence, be homeless, need a home to reunite with a child taken into state care, or be severely ill.
The government needs to find a way to house those people without blowing its own budget, or building so many homes it crowds out the private sector.
And then, it needs to find somewhere to put them.
A brewing situation in East Perth shows just how difficult that is.
On Thursday, John Carey and Rita Saffioti made their way to the fifth floor of a serviced apartment building in East Perth to announce the government had purchased it for $105 million.
"This was such a good deal, we received all the furniture," Carey excitedly told journalists, adding there would need to be some refurbishment work before anyone moved in.
Once that was done though, it would mean another 236 units added to the social and affordable housing pool, for a fraction of the cost and in a much shorter time than if the government had to build something from scratch.
But even before the media conference was done, there was a problem.
Upset neighbours were already gathering five floors below.
"We don't have an issue with social housing," long-term resident Ben Stephenson said.
"But we are families that have a concern with the anti-social behaviours and other criminal activities that are the by-product of social housing."
No doubt reports of violence and other problems in social housing complexes, like in Inglewood last month, would have been fresh in their minds, despite them only representing a small fraction of social housing tenants.
Not helping the situation was that news of the government's plans had taken neighbours by surprise.
Carey insisted there was good reason for that silence, saying going public too early could have seen the sellers bump up their asking price.
"So, respectfully, I was limited in what I could say, but at the first opportunity, which is right now, I think it settled an hour ago, I'm making this announcement," he said.
The only problem with that claim is that Carey had in fact announced the development that morning, on the front page of the paper — before settlement.
It hasn't got the government's relationship with the property's neighbours off to the best start.
But whether they like it or not, social tenants will be arriving in the months ahead, once a community housing provider has been found.
"If we want to tackle these serious issues of housing supply and creating more rentals, then you have to put it also in the heart of the city," Carey said.
The complex would mostly be affordable rentals, he said — "retail workers, hospitality workers, aged care assistants, that kind of mix" — with a smaller number of social housing tenants.
The minister also made the point East Perth needed to lift its weight when it came to social housing, having only 3.2 per cent, compared to 11 per cent in nearby Highgate.
Mr Stephenson agreed there needed to be more social housing in the city, but wanted the government to see the impact of its actions from all sides.
"There's local government, there's local community groups, there's a lot of other people they need to consult before making big changes to affect [the] everyday life of people that live around this area," he said.
Alison Xamon sees both sides of the equation in her roles as Mayor of the City of Vincent and board member of homelessness support organisation Uniting WA.
"It doesn't follow that having social housing means that it's necessarily going to be a bad thing, it's all about how it's done," she said.
Part of that, Xamon said, was about putting people in accommodation appropriate to their needs — for example, placing people with disabilities in the CBD where they can be closer to public transport and other services.
Another part of it was working with the community, because few will ever be overjoyed to have social housing nearby.
"The key here is to ensure that the state government engages urgently and intelligently with the local community to be able to give them the assurance they're seeking that the people who will be moving into these facilities are going to be valued neighbours and that any anti-social behaviour that there may be concerns about is going to be appropriately managed," she said.
Those concerns will always be difficult to manage, especially when emotions are running high.
But for now, when adding social housing to an area, the government needs to either treat it as another curly problem to manage, or ignore the concerns of neighbouring residents at its own risk.
It's a delicate balance — but the alternative is blowing out that waitlist even further.