A reverse form of welfarism: some reflections on Australian housing policy.

Jacobs, Keith

Introduction

The Australian Journal of Social Issues (AJSI) performs an invaluable role in publishing commentaries on social policy concerns. Some of the best articles in AJSI advance not only an incisive understanding of the systemic factors that inform social policy, but also suggest viable reforms for policy makers to consider (see for example, AJSI articles authored by: Bryson & Mowbray 2005; McDonald & Baxter 2005; Ziersch et al. 2007; Thompson 2009; Francis-Brophy & Donoghue 2013; Groenhart & Burke 2014; and Nicholls 2014). This noted, much of the corpus of Australian social policy research falls short in interpreting the different roles performed by government in the overall setting of housing policy. (1) My intention is to address this lacuna first, by providing a critique of the current housing research agenda, and secondly by identifying avenues of inquiry that merit further investigation. I begin by noting some of the gaps in the scholarship that focuses on Australian housing policy research. In the main part of the paper I set out theoretical approaches that can provide a more prescient lens than those currently applied to housing policy. Finally, and by way of a conclusion, I offer predictions as to what the next fifty or so years of housing policy might look like in Australia, and posit ideas as to how Australian housing policy might be reformed to deliver more equitable outcomes.

These are certainly challenging times! Australia, despite its wealth--it is currently ranked second only to Norway in the UN Human Development Index [UNHDI 2013]--is in the midst of what many commentators describe as a 'housing crisis' for low-income households (see for example, Tomlinson 2012; Yates 2013). There is certainly sufficient evidence to support the depiction of an Australian 'crisis' for this cohort of households. As many as 60 per cent of low-income renters pay more than 30 per cent of their disposable income on rent (National Housing Supply Council 2012). Homeownership is now beyond the means of many Australians; the average house price in 1985 was just two and a half times time the average disposable household income. In 2012, the average house price was four and a half times the average household income (Yates 2013). There are an estimated 100,000 people who are deemed homeless (ABS 2012). The plight of indigenous people is especially bleak: as many as 50 per cent of households live in overcrowded conditions (Jordan & Bulloch 2010; Nethercote 2014). Currently, the total amount of social housing stock is now less than it was in 1986 (Yates 2014). The shortage of affordable housing is estimated to be about 500,000 dwellings (Yates 2014), and there appears to be no prospect that the community housing sector has the resources to make up the shortfall. The inadequacy of existing policy settings means that we can be confident that those on low incomes will continue to struggle over the coming years to secure suitable accommodation.

The myth of the benevolent state

Why has the housing crisis persisted and what are the causal factors that accentuate it? An argument often made by Australian social policy researchers (2) is that the crisis is attributable to a failure of government implementation. Put simply, affordability policies fail--we are led to believe--because of factors such as bureaucratic inertia and mismanagement. Over the last twenty or so years government policies that are implemented have been small in scale, usually focused on planning regulations or extending subsidies to first-time homeowners. Yet, for understandable reasons, researchers still adhere to a view that governments are amenable to evidence-based research, and that at some point policy makers will be swayed to adopt appropriate reforms (see for example, research by Badcock 1995; Wood 2003; Kelly et al. 2013).

In other words, the implicit premise that underpins a considerable body of social policy research has endured--that is, governments are broadly well-disposed towards the disadvantaged, and receptive to new research that addresses their predicament. Yet it is this implicit assumption towards government intentionality that I believe is not only naive, but also precludes us from providing insightful diagnosis. Instead, it would be pragmatic if researchers did not rely on assumption or idealism, but instead allowed space in which to consider government intentions in a critical light. This would permit the possibility of various motivations on the part of government, including, for instance, the view that policies towards the disadvantaged can be tokenistic and intended primarily to indicate policy change, rather than to provide it. As I seek to show, addressing the systemic causes that shape the current affordability crisis is less of a priority for governments than the main objective of protecting the wealth and opportunities for profit for homeowners and investors. In this regard, governments, while not operating as a monolithic agency, nonetheless have been largely successful in concealing the contradictions that are a salient feature of existing housing policy.

To develop this claim, I suggest that if we are to understand the interventions of government in the domain of housing it is helpful to consider these activities as bifurcated (Kleinman 1998), distinguishing between those policies that directly benefit homeowners and investors on the one hand; and on the other, policies that are intended to provide assistance to low-income renters and the homeless. Housing research remains focused on the latter, and there is no shortage of recommendations seeking to mitigate the conditions experienced by vulnerable households, be they homeless, housing authority tenants, or marginal rental tenants (see for example, Beer & Faulkner 2013; Goodman et al. 2013; Johnson 2012).

Rather than willingly accept government rhetoric of commitment to addressing the affordability crisis, we need to consider how to investigate housing policy, and what theoretical and policy orientated scholarship we can draw from. One important task required is to probe the practices of government in a critical manner, particularly in relation to vested interests. There is a considerable body of scholarship that housing researchers can draw from (see for example, Peck 2010; Mirowski 2013; Raco 2013). A recent article that considers housing in this broader setting is authored by Aalbers and Christophers (2014). Their focus is on how residential housing performs as a depositary for speculative investment strategies, and how much of the impetus for rising house prices can be traced back to an explicit government policy in which households rather than the government itself, are encouraged to take on debt--under the banner of 'wealth effects'--to stimulate the economy. Privatized or house price Keynesianism is hereby seen as a way both to fuel the economy by propping up consumption and to 'compensate' labour for decades of negligible or even negative real income growth (Aalbers & Christophers 2014: 377-8).

They go on to observe: 'the mantra that "rising house prices are good" remains entrenched, buttressed as it is by pressure on states from the home-owning electorate and the housing market lobby to do everything in their power to protect price levels' (Aalbers & Christophers 2014: 378).

Three other notable authors that researchers in the housing field can draw from are: David Harvey (2010), Loic Wacquant (2009) and Jim Kemeny (2004). The merit of Harvey's work is his exposition of how the processes underpinning residential and commercial development act to steer policy makers. Harvey argues that the drive for profitability that has always been a ubiquitous feature of capitalism is mimicked by agencies within the state. Hence the valorisation of private enterprise and the promulgation of an overtly business-led reform agenda have become enduring features of policymaking and urban development processes. Along similar lines, Loic Wacquant (2009) has noted how a salient feature of neoliberal social policy making is the sustenance of inequality. The 'rampant social insecurity' (169) experienced by low-income households is not a by-product of capitalism but a necessary condition for its ascendency. Wacquant's work serves as a salutary reminder for us to pursue a diagnostic stance when judging the rhetorical claims made by policy makers. It is incumbent on us to try and make explicit the disjunction between the discursive claims made by governments and the policies pursued. I discuss Kemeny's scholarship further in this paper, but at this point it is helpful to consider his suggestion that housing researchers should focus on what he terms 'the doing' of policy (Kemeny (2004: 65). He uses this term to demarcate the practices, machinations and 'achievements of interaction' (65) from the rhetorical and symbolic components of government policy making that are intended to confer legitimacy.

We can discern the intentionality of governments with greater accuracy than at present by paying close attention to the centrality of the political economy and the 'doing' of policy making. This area of government activity is made explicit in the work of Harvey, Wacquant and Kemeny, but other contributions also provide valuable insight in relation to Australia. In 'The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism', Esping-Andersen (1990) discusses national welfare policies in an international context. He suggests there are three variants of welfare state regimes operating within developed nations: liberal welfare, conservative/ corporatist, and social democratic. Australia, (3) along with the UK and the US, is considered by Esping-Andersen to conform to a liberal welfare regime, in which the cumulative effect of government policy has been the extension of market-based reforms to the delivery of welfare. Esping-Andersen's typologies are useful for understanding that housing policy is constituted within the ideological and discursive trajectories that underpin capitalist development. The judgements that governments make in relation to housing policy are secondary to the priorities of wealth creation and profitability.

Australia's welfare regime fulfils only a limited commitment to public housing provision. Australian governments have privileged homeownership since the beginning of the twentieth century, while public housing has always been accorded secondary status (see Davison 1981; Frost 1991). Housing scholarship can also draw from the historical framework set out, for example, in studies by Troy (2012) and Kemeny (1983). Troy's book considers continuities and changes in Australian housing policy in the post-war period. He chides the failure of successive governments to fund public housing. In contrast, homeowners are generously supported. As Troy (2012: 125) writes:

   homeowners were seen as men of substance, pillars of the
   community, as men committed to the community while renters
   were to some extent seen as feckless, as transients with no
   connection with the community and with no desire to be engaged.

He observes that 'under a succession of Commonwealth governments, housing policy became a decreasingly significant social concern' (Tray 2012: 284). For the purposes of this paper it is necessary to ask why government policy making has moved in this direction. The answer arguably lies in the nation's aversion to large-scale public investment strategies in welfare. As Troy's historical study makes explicit, policy makers have been wedded to the idea of Australia being a low-tax nation. Comparison with other countries in the OECD illustrates that over last thirty years Australia has maintained a lower rate of tax as a proportion of GDP than nearly all other OCED countries (Australian Treasury 2013).

Kemeny's (1983) analysis of homeownership in Australia foregrounds the ideological and class fissures underpinning housing policy making. He argues that Australia's home-ownership policy is

predicated on using housing tenure as a means of allocating housing in class terms. Public housing must be kept unattractive to higher-income earners so that they should have every incentive to buy, and public renting is thereby restricted as much as possible to the role of a 'sump tenure', fulfilling purely welfare functions, and consequently validating the Dream [of Homeownership] (Kemeny 1983: 94).

Kemeny's diagnosis of Australian housing policy remains relevant to an understanding of the broad direction of social policy today.

Misdiagnosis?

Up to this point in the paper I have argued that social policy researchers are wedded to the idea of a benevolent state and that there is need to consider the ways that government policies maintain the housing affordability crisis. I have also made reference to the work of scholars whose analyses offer entry points for a different form of investigation. I now turn to my second substantive claim: that we have been unwilling to consider the question as to why managerial forms of intervention endure as a response to systemic housing problems. Without wishing to be too critical, much of the research on Australian housing is constrained by the criteria of policy relevance expected by funding agencies, and therefore has been largely concerned with service delivery issues or typologies of housing need. I am reminded here of Charles Wright Mills' remarks on the perils of 'abstracted empiricism' set out in his book 'The Sociological Imagination (1959). Mills targeted those researchers who seemed content to collect data for its own sake and were reticent in asking wide-ranging and probing questions about the long-term direction of social policy. As I discuss later with reference to public housing, managerial interventions in housing policy generally support more privatised forms of service delivery. Attention is directed at bureaucratic shortcomings, and the solution is generally to provide individualised forms of assistance rather than to embark on structural reform.

The demise of state housing authorities

The arguments I have advanced can be applied to the example of state managed public housing. I have already suggested that the withdrawal of funds from state authorities from the late 1970s can be traced to the hegemony of neoliberal ideology and its influence within Australian government networks. While successive Australian governments have always privileged homeownership as the preferred form of tenure, this was not primarily to the detriment of public housing programs (Kemeny 1983; Hayward 1996). In the 1950s and 1960s, though policy settings varied from state to state, the stock of public housing was sufficient to meet the needs of most of the many households that lacked the resources to purchase a property in the market. Nonetheless, as in other nations, state governments put in place measures to encourage low-income households to purchase a home. Kemeny (1983) has argued that a vibrant and well-resourced public housing sector represented an obstacle for encouraging the take-up of homeownership: why would households move from secure, affordable accommodation to take on a large debt? The withdrawal of funds for state housing authorities was of course presented as an economic necessity by the Commonwealth government, but it was a policy that prevailingly benefited the finance and real estate industry.

Since the mid-1980s, the stock of public housing has declined (Troy 2012) and the only significant injection of funds for public housing was a component of the national economic stimulus plan implemented by Prime Minster Kevin Rudd following the global financial crisis in 2008. Though it has sought to position itself as the means by which to increase the stock of social housing, the community housing sector has neither the resources nor the capacity to make a significant impact on supply (Travers et al. 2011). As Fitzpatrick and Pawson (2014) point out, in the early 1980s the subsidy basis for Australian public housing was reduced further, which in practice provided an incentive for housing authorities to restrict housing to those on very low incomes. The movement of more well-off households away from public housing in combination with needs-based eligibility criteria for new entrants has accentuated the marginal status of public housing vis-a-vis other tenures.

Government funds to support state housing authorities has not been sufficient, to the extent that authorities have had little option but to undertake measures to reduce their stock (Hall & Berry 2007). The diminution of government funds to resource state housing authorities functions as a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby public housing remains insufficient as a vehicle capable of mitigating the housing shortage; public housing is effectively problematised as a failure. The consequences of government policy can be made more explicit if we interrogate the gap between the rhetorical claims of policy and its effects.

New avenues for housing policy research?

Up to this point I have been critical of the ways that social policy researchers have framed housing issues in Australia and the limited responses that have been proposed as policy solutions. So what are the forms of inquiry that researchers in Australia should pursue? As I have suggested, there needs to be a reorientation in the way we envisage government intervention in housing, and acknowledgement that policy-making decisions in this area are the outcome of competing claims-making in which different interest groups seek to impose their agenda (Kemeny 2004). Among the insights provided by Kemeny's work is that housing policy, while presented to the wider public as benign, is primarily concerned with ensuring that opportunities for profit continue. The housing affordability problems experienced by low-income households are viewed as secondary issues to the overriding imperative of wealth creation.

If we adopt the insights afforded by the work of Kemeny (2004), at least three research fields offer new opportunities for scholarship. The first is what I have previously referred to as the 'politics of housing' (see Atkinson & Jacobs 2009; Atkinson & Jacobs 2010; Jacobs & Manzi 2014; Jacobs, in press), that is, an investigation as to how powerful groups have managed to establish a discursive narrative about government policy that is aligned with their interests. A 'politics of housing' research perspective focuses on key moments of policy making such as the withdrawal of negative gearing in the mid-1980s by Paul Keating and its subsequent reversal after intense pressure from lobbyists (for an insightful analysis see Badcock & Browett 1991). This episode provides us with an opportunity to consider the pressures that are brought to bear on politicians when they have tried to reduce subsidies that are beneficial to rental investors. Other issues for investigation would be the role played by private developers to pressurise planning authorities to extend residential planning zones on the outskirts of metropolitan areas, and the lobbying to extend first-time homeowner grants (see Gurran & Phibbs 2013 for an excellent example of this form of investigation).

A second area that requires further analysis is the extensive influence of neoliberal ideology on housing policy (see Burke & Tiernan 2002; Berry 2014; Orchard 2014 for three wide-ranging discussions with reference to Australia). The ideology of neoliberalism has been deployed as a rationale to justify the reduction in funds for public housing and the use of market-based mechanisms to deliver services within government welfare agencies (Nicholls 2014). While the influence of neoliberalism is apparent, it is important to recognise that the market-based reforms and privatisation policies that were in place in the late 1970s can be sourced to other factors such as: demographic shifts, technological innovation, and globalisation processes (see Berry 1988; Hayward 1996).

We can detect neoliberalism as an influence in the rationales provided by government agencies to reorientate service delivery towards individualised and targeted modes of service delivery (see for example, FaHCSIA 2013). Of course, a corollary of this reorientation is the disavowal of supply-side interventions. Important studies (see for example, Crouch 2011; Raco 2013; Davies 2014) explore the extent to which commercial agencies have been able to create new sites of profitability in areas that were previously the domain of government welfare. Consider, for example, how the accommodation needs of low-income households provide rental investors with an opportunity to generate wealth. Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA) is prima facie an example of how government resources are steered towards landlord investors. Rather than a means of rendering housing more affordable for low-income earners, CRA should be viewed as a proxy landlord subsidy. In contrast to the sum of direct investment in public housing, CRA expenditure has increased significantly over the last 30 years. Currently it costs $3.6 billion per year (Commission of Audit 2014). We can see the privileging of demand-side subsidies (4) as an alternative to supply-side interventions as symptomatic of wider political developments in areas of social policy reform and welfare. CRA not only manifests as profits for private landlords, but also adds to inflationary pressures that empower landlords to justify high rents.

Commonwealth Rent Assistance is just one obvious example, but over the coming years we can expect more forms of welfare provision to be redirected towards commercial and not-for-profit sectors. Spies-Butcher (2014: 188) has used the term 'dual welfare state' to note the willingness of policy makers to grant tax concessions for privatised forms of welfare, such as superannuation, private health insurance and childcare. Expenditure on welfare now generally takes the form of direct payments and targeted support for vulnerable households rather than supply-side interventions (see Zaretsky et al. 2008). Such research would suggest that in future we could expect to see governments seeking to extend direct payments to low-income households as a basis on which to encourage competition in the welfare sector.

The focus on support services along the lines outlined above can yield insight about the perimeters and constraints on government policy making. The extension of neoliberal components of service provision provides further evidence that mainstream policy making has eschewed supply-side interventions. We might ask: why has this shift occurred? Here it is apposite to draw from Hillier's (2007) deployment of the concept of 'territorialisation' to characterise the way that commonwealth and state government services have disengaged from material concerns and concentrated on matters of individual pathology (see Johnson & Chamberlain 2011). With the benefit of hindsight, it is evident that individualised policies have had only a marginal impact, and yet government institutions continue to invest in these forms of activity.

The third area of housing policy that merits more in-depth exploration by researchers is the interface between fiscal policy and housing. The housing economist Judy Yates (see for example, Yates 2008; 2011; 2013; 2014) has undertaken important work in highlighting the extent by which Australian fiscal policy enables well-off investors and homeowners to accrue significant profits with only minimal tax liabilities. The current Australian tax system provides inputted (indirect) subsidies to homeowners that total $45 billion annually: including $30 billion in the form of capital gains tax exemptions for homeowners when they sell their home, and $5.4 billion to rental investors in the form of negative gearing and capital gains exemptions (Yates 2008). Yates' work demonstrates that the broad direction of Australian housing policy performs a reverse form of welfarism by providing considerable resources and government-inputted tax subsidies for homeowners and private rental investors. There is also no evidence of any sustained interest within government to rein-in housing subsidy arrangements that benefit investors, and to hypothecate these savings to the public housing sector.

Housing futures: the spectre of increased inequality?

I now turn to the final part of the paper to consider the likely scenario for Australian housing over the coming years. (5) At this juncture, it seems most unlikely that the direction of Australian government housing policy will change course. (6) Therefore we can predict an accentuation of housing-based fissures as increasing numbers of low-income households will be unable to take advantage of the wealth-creating opportunities available to homeowners and private rental investors. Within the government sector, a diminution of resources will encourage policy makers to propose interventions that are cost saving, that is, administratively and incrementally directed rather than structural. In practice, interventions, as I have suggested earlier, are targeted at individuals who are judged most vulnerable, such as young homeless people and those with acute social needs. Such policies have some positive impact for individuals, but they have little bearing on the causal factors that give rise to poverty.

The indications are that the gap between the well-off and the disadvantaged is increasing. Important works such as Thomas Piketty's (2014) study Capital in the Twenty-First Century have sought to demonstrate how social inequality is an enduring consequence for economic systems that privilege market mechanisms. Piketty argues that inequality declined for much of the period between the mid-1940s and mid-1970s as a consequence of collective forms of governance and the power of trade unions to secure wage settlements above the level of inflation, but since the mid 1980s social inequality has increased as governments have pursued market-based agendas. Piketty sees the welfare spending projects that endured for thirty years or so after the Second World War as an aberration. In a recent OECD report (OECD 2014), the authors put forward the prognosis for the OECD nations--including Australia--that over the next fifty years not only will there be greater inequality, but also a slowdown in economic growth from 3.6 per cent in 2010-2020 to 2.4 per cent during 2050-2060 (OECD 2014:1), and growing welfare demands brought on by ageing populations. Both demographic and economic factors will certainly shape the housing market, but is unclear at this juncture how government will respond to these pressures.

As Aalbers and Christophers (2014: 383) write, 'housing serves as a principal crucible for the exacerbation of multiply-constituted social inequality', so it is pertinent to consider the specific ways in which entrenched inequalities will impact on housing outcomes. We can anticipate that the continued high price of housing, particularly in the large metropolitan regions, will remain as a brake on the opportunities available for first-time homeowners. Some of the aspirant homeowners have little choice but to rent in the private market (Hulse et al. 2013; Ong et al. 2013). Forrest and Hirayama (2015) have made a similar argument; they claim that housing has become increasingly commodified as a consequence of speculative capital, and that rising house prices in major conurbations can be attributed not only to increases in demand brought about by demographic changes, but also to the propensity of wealthy individuals and property fund managers to purchase residential housing as an investment.

It is evident that urban sprawl in our large cities will continue as the pressure for new housing intensifies (see Randolph & Tice 2014 for discussion on Australian cities) but it is likely, too, that a greater proportion of young households will be reliant on a dysfunctional and unregulated private rental sector. It is anticipated that Australia's population will increase from its current 22.7 million to between 36.8 and 48.3 million by 2060 (ABS 2013). The challenges that arise from social polarisation and population increase will become paramount, but other issues are also likely to come to the fore, such as the increased risk of natural disasters arising from climate change (see Williams et al. 2010; Hallegatte et al. 2013). Evidence from here and abroad suggests that disadvantaged households are particularly vulnerable in these situations (Williams & Jacobs 2011; Cutter et al. 2003).

Conclusion

Finally, the policy prognosis set out in this paper points to one obvious conclusion: the need for governments to increase the supply of affordable housing and end the subsidies that currently benefit investors and homeowners. An intervention by the government to build more public housing would mitigate the stress that has become an enduring experience for many disadvantaged Australian households. The scale of investment required is considerable: it has been estimated by Yates (2013: 125) that an additional 300,000 affordable housing units are required to meet expected demand from households over the next twenty years. Yet for the reasons I have outlined in this paper, there is little prospect that governments in their current incarnation will rise to the challenge. Policy making remains myopic in its scope and politicians seemingly unwilling to address the significant housing challenges that lie ahead.

Campaigners in support of a more equitable housing system have been impeded by the failure of service providers to speak out against government housing policy. It is likely that welfare service providers in areas such as homelessness and community housing are reluctant to campaign for fear that their funding might be jeopardised (see Jacobs & Flanagan 2013). The reliance on government funds has prevented organisations from voicing opposition to the systemic inequities of the Australian housing system. Another impediment to reform is the three-year electoral cycle, which deters politicians from committing resources to long-term investment programs.

As outlined by Goodman et al. (2013), failures in housing policy have led to new forms of marginal housing, such as low-income households living in hostels and caravan parks. As the pressure on the private rental market becomes more intense, there will be an expectation from vulnerable households that more systematic monitoring of rogue landlords be undertaken to reduce instances of exploitation. While we can welcome a tightening of rules regarding landlords, additional regulation will not be a sufficient response to systemic inequities that persist. As I have stated from the outset, the problems of housing must be framed in the broad setting of political economy and account for the ideological currents that influence the practices of government. The housing system reflects existing inequalities, but is also a causal factor that accentuates them.

Managerial 'solutions' in the provision of housing generally fall short, yet they serve as a rationale for critics of the current welfare approach to make the case for more privatised forms of service delivery. (7) Attention is focused on individual shortcomings and the recommendations that are often proffered are to provide forms of bespoke assistance for those in distress. Such interventions not only fail to ameliorate the housing crisis, but they also reinforce the hegemonic status of neoliberal discourses within the realm of government. As long as policies to address inequality remain secondary to the priority of maintaining the conditions that enable homeowners, rental investors, the finance industry and real estate agencies to reap large profits from housing, the affordability crisis in Australian will endure.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Boyd Hunter, Cameron Parsell, Kathleen Flanagan and the two anonymous referees for their suggestions on an early version of the paper. I am grateful to the support provided by the Australian Research Council (Future Fellowship award FT120100471).

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Endnotes

(1) See Darcy (2009); Gurran & Phibbs (2014); Nicholls (2014); and Rogers & Darcy (2014), for four recent exceptions.

(2) See for example, Milligan & Pinnegar (2010); Gilmour & Milligan (2012); and Tomlinson (2012) for approaches that broadly support this attribution.

(3) For a similar wide-ranging discussion on comparative approaches to welfare regimes, see Castles (1998).

(4) This recommendation is advanced in the National Commission of Audit report (2014).

(5) For an interesting discussion of future housing scenarios, see Burke et al. (2004).

(6) It has not been possible, in a paper of this length, to discuss ways of understanding the institutional barriers that impede policy change. An insightful contribution can be found in the article by Mahoney (2000).

(7) Evidence of this rationale can be found in the recommendations contained within the National Commission of Audit Report (2013).