- by TT
- The Guardian
- Issue #2123
Engels wrote a pamphlet in 1872 titled The Housing Question. It was a polemic criticising ideas advanced by Pierre Joseph Proudhon, a French anarchist and utopian socialist, that the Housing Problem could be solved by a simplistic plan where workers paid rent that could be redeemed over a long period of time and eventually transfer ownership of the rented house or apartment to the worker.
Engels argues that Proudhon wants to transform the workers into capitalists, that he doesn’t understand the real economic and social conditions of the workers and their exploitation and that the housing problem for workers is integral to the system of exploitation under capitalism where housing has become a commodity for profit.
Engels is saying that to solve the housing question we must abolish the system of capitalism and housing for profit.
Engels’ Housing Question written in 1872 and the housing crisis faced by workers in 2024 have common threads but the problems have become intensified with the monopolisation and internationalisation of capital.
In Australia like other developed capitalist countries, we had a system of public housing that started here in 1912 but got a big boost in the 1930s, mainly as a response to the deprivations of the Great Depression.
Lidcombe in Sydney, like many Australian suburbs, had two tent cities of unemployed who had been evicted from their homes because they were unable to pay the rent.
It’s worthwhile noting that the Communist Party led a successful campaign to fight evictions; they would mobilise people to form pickets outside homes where evictions were occurring and hold off the police.
In response to the forced evictions of workers, and record unemployment levels in the Depression, Labor Premier Jack Lang, a ferocious anti-communist, property developer, and real estate agent was forced to champion reforms to stop evictions and restrict rent rises. It’s arguable this was the impetus for the development of the public housing model in Australia.
In Lang’s eyes this was a necessary reform to protect the interests of capitalists including himself, but not all capitalists were united around this and it was one of the reasons why Lang was deposed as Premier of NSW and expelled from the Labor Party.
It’s ironic that one of Jack Lang’s admirers, none other than Bankstown lad young Paul Keating set about dismantling the system of public housing when he was Treasurer and later PM during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The Hawke/Keating government moved away from funding built public housing to providing rent subsidies for low-income earners. This was arguably the beginning of the end for public housing as we knew it.
Prior to this, state governments funded by federal government grants built up to 35 per cent of all new housing as public housing. This was a very effective control on rents and house prices in the private market.
The decline in funding for public housing was closely followed by state governments, particularly Labor state governments, selling off public housing more often than not to investors. In the case of NSW, that meant investors with links to the Labor Finance Minister Joe Tripodi.
Some terms worth understanding:
Public Housing – owned and managed by the government (rapidly becoming extinct).
Social Housing – contracted out by government to both private and ‘not-for-profit’ Community Housing Providers (CHPs). CHPs can be deceptive, have a look at the directors. Many have links to large developers. Their clients are people who are mostly on benefits (unemployment, aged pension, disabled and sickness).
Affordable housing – owned and managed by CHPs and rented out at a rate lower than the market. The recipients can be people defined as necessary, essential or emergency workers (police, fire fighters, nurses or teachers particularly in communities with a big shortage of rental accommodation).
SOCIAL & AFFORDABLE HOUSING QUOTAS
Councils are encouraged to set quotas on new high density housing projects for a percentage of apartments to be available for social and affordable housing tenants. In return the developer gets concessions on the local environment plans and development control plan requirements, and can build, for example, 3 storeys higher than usually permitted – a big advantage to the developer in terms of profits. Often there are time limitations where the ‘Social and Affordable Housing’ lasts for an agreed period of time and then reverts to the developer/owner.
In Lidcombe NSW we have a new high rise development aptly named Lidcombe Rise, it was originally a row of public housing on Church St, Lidcombe. As the public tenants moved on, the houses were demolished one by one until none were left standing. Property NSW owns the land (NSW government) now but a private developer (Billbergia) has built a row of towers on the site, mostly private apartments with a smaller number of ‘Affordable and Social Housing’ apartments. So now there are privately owned apartments on public land.
Interestingly, the CHP which manages the Social and Affordable Housing component of the Billbergia development “Lidcombe Rise” is Evolve. Evolve has transformed itself over the last decade from a small community friendly not for profit CHP to a big corporatised organisation. When you look at the who’s who of directors on their board it becomes apparent that some have direct links to the developer/construction industry. A standout is David Borger a full time lobbyist for Western Sydney business interests.
David Borger has history as an urban planner on Auburn Council at a time when the council was enveloped in corruption scandals. Borger moved on to become Mayor of Parramatta and one-time State Member for Granville, quickly promoted to Housing Minister in the NSW Labor government. The good people of Granville appreciated his efforts so much they dumped him as a one-term member in a traditionally safe Labor seat. Borger quickly moved to become the spokesperson lobbyist for Western Sydney business and the go-to person for the Murdoch media to support high density development being dumped on the people of Western Sydney.
In the 2022 Census there were 125,000 public housing properties in NSW. That number is rapidly declining.
PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS
We have seen a big shift in the consciousness of the public. Housing has become about investment and not primarily about shelter. Among people lucky enough to own their own homes, property values are a big talking point. Also, community and not-for-profit organisations no longer speak about public housing, they refer to Social, Community or Affordable Housing. Of course there is often a conflict of interest where they rely on government funding, so they change their language appropriately.
The propaganda through mainstream media never stops. Turn on the news today and you are treated to coverage of bonny King Charlie visiting a NSW Housing Project, supposedly meeting workers and the public but all coats and ties with the cover of fluorescent safety vest and helmet.
So, the deregulation, privatisation, economic rationalism, and neoliberal policies of the Hawke/Keating government were important in eroding public housing, but also important in igniting speculation on housing. They helped create the conditions for capitalism to run amuck.
The Special Rapporteur to the UN Human Rights Council calls it “the financialisation of housing,” and describes how structural changes have occurred internationally that have led to massive amounts of global capital being invested in housing as a commodity. This has led to an imbalance in the accumulation of wealth. The impact, of course, is on those with little or no wealth and their right to adequate housing.
Should we be surprised?
As Engels highlights in The Housing Question, this is how capitalists maximise their profits, and reforms within the system that are not enough to resolve the housing problem.
CHALLENGES
Our challenges are the need to develop an alternative narrative, to refute the terminology of ‘social and affordable housing,’ and to expose that these reforms only fuel speculation by feeding the very capitalists responsible for unaffordable housing.
35 per cent of all new housing should be public housing. Public housing needs to be put back on the agenda as a government social responsibility.
We need to expose how public wealth is used (stolen) and transferred into the pockets of private investors through negative gearing, subsidies whereby private investors have their mortgages paid by subletting private properties to public housing tenants.
Regulation needs to limit rent increases, to stop unfair evictions, and aim for rents to be no higher than 25 per cent of a workers’ income.
There should be a stop to foreign investment and control of domestic housing. Put a stop to housing investment being used to clean dirty money.
We need to point out the NIMBY – YIMBY debate is a diversion from the main issues and helps to camouflage the real problems.
We should campaign against property developers being elected and making decisions on government bodies especially councils where they influence decisions they profit from.
It’s important to highlight that the attacks on workers’ rights (CFMEU) in the construction industry are part of the attack on regulation and building controls.
