Reimagining public housing: the transformative potential of Centrelink’s Voluntary Work Program
Jan 23, 2025
The current housing crisis is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of transforming homes into investment vehicles. And it has been decades in the building. The only thing unique about the present crisis is that it is now destabilising both the major political parties – in that sense the housing crisis is now a political crisis. The impending federal election campaign will no doubt reveal a raft of proposed political fixes that may or may not exacerbate the crisis.
Nevertheless, in the interests of not wasting a perfectly good crisis – or relying on the two major parties to come up with the goods – we believe it is time to look for imaginative answers to this crisis because it was the imaginative work of previous generations that found a way to provide housing for almost all Australians.
Such an imaginative shift would begin by no longer seeing public housing only as an option for individuals with complex needs to one that also recognised it as essential infrastructure rooted in substantive rights and intended for broad and engaged citizenship. Precedents from Vienna, Singapore and Nordic nations, where public housing serves a wide cross-section of citizens, demonstrate what is possible when we imagine things differently.
Having made that leap let’s proceed to imagine our public housing neighbourhoods as places of innovation, sustainability, wellbeing and community spirit. Places where people find opportunities to tap their creativity, both individually and collectively. Places where we would all like to live.
The good news is that the potential exists for those communities already, in the form of Centrelink’s approved voluntary work as a means of fulfilling mutual obligations for income support. The bad news is this is currently subject to a range of restrictions that are holding it back.
The recent efforts to revive a more active vision for affordable housing through models targeting essential workers represent a positive step forward. But it still leaves employment and the economy with the whip hand. It is also potentially problematic as it constructs “good” housing recipients – that is essential workers – versus “bad” housing recipients – that is those who do not work. These initiatives fail to address the needs of those outside the paid workforce—who comprise 75% of current public housing residents and are among the most severely impacted by the private housing crisis.
The Centrelink policy on voluntary work provisions, already allows income support recipients who are over 55 to meet mutual obligations through 15 hours per week of structured voluntary work. By lifting age restrictions and with sufficient program support, this policy setting could help revitalise public housing community development initiatives, such as tenant participation, contributing to a broader shift towards imagining and recognising public housing as a hub for positive civic engagement.
The Neighbourhood That Works (NTW) initiative is working to reshape the narrative around public housing, with a key focus on creating active participation opportunities for those excluded from the labour market
Providing clear pathways for volunteering as an approved mutual obligation for income support offers unemployed individuals a way to contribute to a more inclusive and productive vision for public housing. With the benefit of secure housing and public tenant participation programs—such as housing maintenance and gardens programs, resource share and repair, and social and arts programs—some public housing residents are extremely well-positioned to volunteer to meet their income support mutual obligations.
Age restrictions on volunteering should be lifted because any unemployed person who freely chooses volunteering clearly demonstrates motivation, accountability, and productivity by choosing structured, supervised voluntary work. Volunteering has also been evidenced to develop skills, enhance employability, and keeps individuals active. A limited income and the prospect of higher wages naturally drive most volunteers back to paid work when available. Even without immediate employment prospects, volunteering improves psychological well-being, connectedness, and community health.
For people motivated enough to choose volunteering, the restrictions are unnecessary and may even be counterproductive and psychologically harmful-shown to undermine autonomy by coercing participation in compulsory employment service provider activities with little utility.
The lifting of voluntary work restrictions is also in accordance with the Parliamentary Report, Rebuilding Employment Services Nov’23, recommendations. They state that government should trial “Voluntary participation and choice of placement for projects that contribute to community development.” And that “Success be defined around improvements in capability, health, mental health, connectedness, self-esteem, skills, and confidence rather than expecting entry into open employment in the first instance.”
Such local volunteering also contributes to neighbourhoods by transforming unproductive suburbs into more culturally vibrant and engaging spaces. This engagement aligns closely with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly Goals 11 and 12 which promote sustainable, self-reliance as a way of meeting more needs locally, reducing environmental footprints, and enhancing community resilience.
Voluntary Work as an approved mutual obligation for income support presents a positive and engaging pathway for those who would choose it. It just requires the removal of barriers that are preventing it from being used to its full potential. With clearer pathways and the right supports, it could help the largest demographic in public housing—those not in paid employment—move beyond the welfare dependency-versus-paid-employment binary. This program has the potential to help reshape public housing as a participatory, active space, building greater public support for it as a valuable housing policy option.
Voluntary work for income support has the potential to begin the labour-intensive process of enabling the nation to reimagine public housing and public places as places where our own humanity and creativity is held up. As argued by Bonnie Honig, public things, in this case public housing, are central to our democratic capacity and form of life.