If we are looking at how badly we are doing with housing, you can’t go past Victoria to see where we are going wrong.
Members of the current Labor government are in open rebellion against their own party over how social housing is slowly being transferred from public to private ownership.
A faction called Labor for Housing has emerged in the party and is publicly criticising the government for its latest plan to sell off the state’s 44 public housing towers.
According to the government’s own estimates only 11,000 of the 30,000 people currently housed in these towers would be offered social housing. The rest would be in private housing.
All this in a state where 80,000 people are on the social housing waiting list.
Residents in one of these towers have announced legal action and are filing a class action lawsuit against the government on the basis that their lack of housing is a breach of human rights.
Victoria has the lowest proportion of social housing in any state and is about to make that less. It’s wrong and it needs to stop.
Would you like to see more social housing in Victoria and Australia?