Housing policies should reflect the sort of society we want to live in, not the quest for wealth accumulation.A home is not a commodity.
The Coalition and the property industry, with the help of the media, are obsessed with the financial value of property as a commodity for wealth creation. Surely housing policy should be about housing as a human right, where in homes we raise families, entertain friends and where we can close off from markets and business.
Too often property advocates and vested interests see the issue of housing as a technical problem concerning debt, prices and “bubbles”. Technical and management issues are important but there is much more at stake. What is really needed is that the policies should reflect the sort of society that we want to live in. “Housing” policy is not an end in itself. It needs to serve certain values and principles.
What are the guiding principles that should apply to both house ownership and rental?
The first is that we should regard housing for its use-value. Too often we value housing for its exchange-value. We need to decommodify housing. We must build houses to provide ourselves and others with shelter, comfort, a place where we can grow as individuals and a base from which we can develop as full members of society. We must avoid regarding houses as instruments of exchange as is so often the case today with taxation incentives for investment in housing for short-term capital gain.
Housing policy should not be influenced by the quest for wealth accumulation.
Older people like me have benefitted from increased property values through no particular virtue or work on our part. In the process we have frozen new home buyers out of the market. A fall in property values would be socially very desirable. But the media keeps us focussed on how we must protect our unearned property gains.
In the iconic film The Castle Darryl Kerrigan put it this way: ‘I’m really starting to understand what the Aborigines feel. Well my house is like their land. Their land holds their memories, the land is their story, it’s everything, you can’t just pick it up and plonk it down somewhere else.” Kerrigan added: “It is not just a house, it’s a home. A man’s home is his castle … This is as clear as day. It is right and fair that a family be allowed to live in their own house. That is justice.”
Robert Menzies said in 1942: “One of the best instincts in us is that which induces us to have one little piece of earth with a house and a garden which is ours so that we can withdraw and in which we can be amongst our friends and into which no stranger may come against our will.”
It is an important principle that everyone should be able to live in a house or apartment appropriate to their needs. Good housing is a human right, just like the right to a good education and good health care. Housing, health and education must be part of a social wage for all.
Housing is not a commodity or a market transaction. It is where we develop as members of a family and community.
The second principle is that housing must be part of a neighbourhood.
We are more than individuals linked by market transactions. Meaning in life comes from relationships both personal and communal. Our life in the public sphere is no less necessary than our private lives. As citizens we engage and contribute to the common good. It is in communities and neighbourhoods that we learn respect for others. It is where we abide by shared rules of civic contact. It is where we build social capital, networks of trust with our neighbours. We need to behave in ways that make us trusted members of our neighbourhood.
Unfortunately many housing developments are sterile and hostile to the building of strong neighbourhoods. They promote exclusion rather than inclusion. Ugly shopping malls instead of local shops. More and more of our physical and metamorphic space is being enclosed by the market. This alienation from neighbours takes many forms in gated enclaves — high walls, roller doors, CCTV cameras, private entertainment, which all have the consequence of avoiding contact with neighbours and hinder the development of community. Good housing policy should be about building strong and vibrant neighbourhoods and not just isolated houses or units.
The third important housing principle should be the promotion of social mixing and sharing. It should be a basic requirement of good housing policy to avoid stratification or ghettos whether on the basis of income, employment, religion or other grounds.
During the Covid pandemic we have seen again the importance of public spaces and the social mixing of individuals, children, families and groups sharing our public parks and gardens. It is a real pleasure to see it. Those public spaces must be protected and enhanced. Unfortunately conservatives governments have given access to these public spaces to developers. For example public parks are deliberately underfunded and we are told that access to iconic beauty spots can only be maintained with money from private developers, the new squatters on public land
Our health service increasingly discourages social mixing through the massive $12 billion-a-year subsidising of private health insurance which is separating out services for the more wealthy. Our schools are becoming more stratified with wealthy parents aided by enormous government subsidies, sending their children to separate private schools.Many private schools have become commodities rather than communities, where parents contract out their responsibilities to the school.
Housing policy and programs must support social mixing through for example setting minimum and substantial levels of social inclusion in all major new developments.
In the post-war years, there was always a senior Commonwealth minister as minister for housing. That is no longer the case. We need to reassert appointment of a senior minister as minister for housing along with ministers for education and health.
Appropriate housing, education and health facilities are important human rights for everyone.
Housing policies and programs must be anchored in key principles; use value and not exchange value; building communities and neighbourhoods and social mixing and sharing.
John Menadue is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.
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