Events over the past year have shown a light on racial inequality across the globe. Australia is not an exception. This nation's journey towards a more just, equitable and reconciled identity still has a long way to go. With that in mind and in the spirit of reconciliation, we acknowledge the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people today. Hello and welcome to Policy for Import. I'm Sharon Beisle. I'm a professor of public policy at the Crawford School at the Australian National University and Director of the Children's Policy Centre and the Poverty and Inequality Research Centre. And I'm Anna Greta Hunter. I'm a cardiologist in Physician and I'm the Human Futures Fellow at the College of Health and Medicine here at the Australian National University. So welcome back to Policy for Import. This podcast is of course based at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University and at the Crawford School there are a series of short courses and degree programmes that really address the sorts of public policy challenges that we frequently mention and discuss on this programme. If you're interested in further education in the area please check out the website Crawford.anu.edu.au/study. So Sharon last week we started on a conversation around housing and the first thing I'd like to comment on is we've had some wonderful feedback from listeners and it's always so good to hear from our listeners how they found or how interested they were in the topics. Someone commented that they were so glad to hear us talking about housing that it's such a central policy area in the Australian landscape and to hear the conversation begin last week with Barbara Norman talking about the relationship between the changing climate, the challenges of climate change and housing in the Australian landscape. It was wonderful to hear the positive feedback from our listeners. It really was, I mean we always love to hear from our listeners whether it's good bad or indifferent but it's really wonderful when it's both positive but also passionate. We've talked a lot about the big systems in this country that have been under stress, so health education and of course housing is the third big one that impacts on people's lives every single day and listening to Barbara is just quite inspirational. There are times when it's quite depressing but there's always that pathway forward that Barbara's able to give us and so for those who didn't hear last week's episode I'd really encourage them to go back and listen to what Barbara had to say and of course excitingly her new book is out. It's about to be launched and it's in book shops so that will be a really great read. I have definitely on my Christmas reading list at this point in time very much looking forward to getting my hands on a copy. Yeah I think as we move towards Christmas undergrader maybe you and I should come up with our Christmas reading list that we share with with with our listeners and perhaps ask other people to suggest what they think we should be reading over the summer break. Listers consider that an invitation please send us your suggestions we'll say what we can do. We would love to hear but today we're we're against staying with housing and we know that there is insufficient access to safe affordable housing in Australia and that it is a major problem for so many people. According to the Productivity Commission high rental prices are pushing people out of the private market and into social housing and in some cases into homelessness because we simply do not have enough affordable or social housing in this country. Even for people who are able to afford these very high prices the situation is often precarious. Many properties are poorly heated or cooled creating an unhealthy environment for tenants but with rents so high there are very few option for tenants and often there is little incentive for owners to improve conditions. Across the board this lack of access to suitable housing can have a major impact on people's lives and on their wellbeing and so on this episode we want to look at issues of housing in terms of accessibility and justice and spend some time imagining what a better system might look like. And to do that we have two fabulous guests with us today on the pod Vazana Chaudry and Joel Dignum. Vazana could I invite you to introduce yourself? Hi I run the Disability Law Service at Canary Community Law which is a community legal centre that gives free legal help to people who are on low incomes and facing other barriers in the ACT and I'm also recently returned Churchill Fellow. My Churchill Fellowship was specifically focused on poverty, discrimination law frameworks. It's fantastic to have you with us today Vazana and Joel would you like to introduce yourself to Alessoners? Hello yes my name is Joel Dignum I'm the Executive Director of Better Renting which is a community of renters working together for stable affordable and healthy homes. I've been doing that for about four years now which is what brought me into the housing space and prior to that I worked in community organizing and campaigning with climate organisations. It is so good to have the two of you with us talking about such a central issue on the Australian policy landscape and maybe to open it will be great to hear from both of you how you would describe housing accessibility in Australia particularly for the people that you both work with and represent. Joel would you like to start for how's the rental landscape? Look the rental landscape is a little bit bleak I would say in summary and the way that the really the affordability crisis in our housing system plays out is in a lot of different ways. So I think you do have some people who are literally sleeping rough and that's really the most striking example of how our housing system is failing. You also have a lot of people who are homeless and so they might be sleeping in their car, sleeping in a friend's place or living in overcrowded housing and that's sometimes less visible but also very striking. We had someone team party on our projects last winter who took part from their car from a tent in Tasmania and I think you also have a lot of people who are forced to accept housing that isn't right for their needs. Now that may of course that also includes people with disabilities where this can be really challenging but also a whole load different people, a whole load different needs that aren't being met and also that relates to people not being able to exercise the rights they have as renters because of that fear of what they might lose because of that fear of the rent increase. So all up and down through the rental housing system you do see different degrees of adversity but as a whole load of people who aren't able to access the housing they need because of the way the market's currently working. Fasana tell us about how you see housing accessibility in the work that you're doing. Oh yeah unfortunately it's fairly bleak in the social housing space as well I have to say in my work particularly during disability discrimination law we do assist people with housemaid matters and often there are issues around actually finding accessible housing challenges with getting modifications done to existing social housing properties. In many cases people's disability will change over time and so a property that might have been suitable at the start of a tendency might no longer be suitable and so that might mean that people may need a transfer or some modifications and unfortunately they're extremely long delays in having some of those modifications made or being able to transfer people to properties that actually meet their disability needs. The other issue of course is that in there are cases where people may be evicted from their properties due to disability related issues so for example a person that may have lived experience mental health you know potentially could be evicted because of certain behaviours that may be associated with the disability or even potentially due to issues like hoarding so yeah no it's a huge problem and one that particularly impacts people that experiencing poverty. Listening to both if you talk about some of those really deep challenges that people are facing I'm thinking about Anglicare's recent 2020 survey where they pointed out that rental affordability has crashed to record lows for people on low incomes and of course that's been exacerbated by the rising cost of living and particularly the rising cost of energy. Joel some of the work that you do through better renting focuses on ensuring that people have access to healthy homes. Can you talk us through what you mean by healthy homes and what sort of impact poor rental conditions have on people's health and on their wellbeing more broadly? Yeah well there's a lot of different ways in which homes can threaten people's health. A big one that we talk a lot about is actually the quality of the structure itself and the temperatures that are inside that home because of that. So there's a lot of people renting a property so get so cold and winter that it is a threat to their health. I don't know if Anglicare would be better than me at the sort of the physiology of this but it can lead to issues cardiovascular disease or spirit disease and in fact about 6.5% of all deaths in Australia are attributable to cold. That's a pretty startling finding and that's much more in Australia than in other much colder places so I think our housing has a lot of answer for there. I think though the relationship between housing and health isn't just as direct as that. There's also been some really interesting work that looks that when people have more unaffordable housing that also leads to worse cardio vascular injuries.
comes and there's a few different ways that can happen. Part of it is simply the stress of having to worry about that but it also means people have less money to look after their health or to be spending on medication. And I think when we talk about a healthy home where in the context of our campaigning work we're often talking about minimum energy efficiency status of rental properties but I think it's also part of a bigger vision about a home that does allow people to flourish and have a healthy life that isn't going into the cause of stress that isn't going to have issues with mold or asbestos or lead paint all these different things and things we should be thinking about to ensure people kind of the home that keeps them and their family healthy. Joe those issues of asbestos or mold or lead paint that you talk about are things that it's very hard for individuals to change particularly if you're renting a house that has those problems. What sort of protections are there for people if they're renting a house that they find has mold for example? Do people have a claim to to require that those kinds of things are fixed or do they have to just put up with them? A mold is a really big one particularly in New South Wales that turns out but I think of a lot of people including in Canaver where I'm living. It's it's tricky and I think part of what makes it tricky is that there is a little bit of ambiguity sometimes around what causes the mold or at least the perception of ambiguity. I think often for renters it's pretty clear that actually this house just isn't fit but I think it's less clear cut than some other issues. So while the law on paper would say this is something the landlord should remedy and there is some previous tribunal decisions that do suggest that in practice getting action is really difficult and I think that this is one of the challenges we can front in this base not only getting good laws written down but then make sure they're going to work in practice and creating a sort of a culture but also an enforcement culture that means that those laws are changed how things actually play out in the real world. And Joel from the work that you've done how widespread are these challenges? What proportion of renters or how widespread is the problem of people renting not having healthy homes that that they can enjoy and and feel healthy in? Yeah it's a really widespread problem and I'd also point out it's a problem in other housing as well and I think you know we target the rental issues but absolutely want everyone to have a healthy home. Estimating is a little bit tricky so we previously did some analysis in the ACT looking at published energy efficiency data and all of that about two in five rental properties got the lowest energy efficiency rating that they were disclosing zero basically and that's an awful lot of properties in the ACT and it's you know that that number should probably be zero percent of properties getting that rating. There's been some other survey data that has maybe 20 percent of people staying a struggle to stay warm in winter and then I think it's a similar proportion of people who who describe having more problems in their homes. I think one of the things that's tricky about this though is Australians in general I think renters in particular have got so accustomed to to bad housing conditions that some people wouldn't even realize and may not even say speak to it in a survey. I've lived in rentals that in hindsight I can see we're really cold and I shouldn't have been having to live like that but if someone had asked me a survey it might not have even struck me as a remarkable I might not have made a note of it so I think part of the work we're trying to do is better renting is also trying to change up people's expression of housing and make people more aware that we can actually do this better the situation we're currently living in and putting up with doesn't have to be the normal. These issues of housing affordability do really have a major impact on people who might already be struggling financially and if people's circumstances change if they lose work or they have to care for family members this can lead to extreme housing insecurity and even homelessness especially given the extremely low rates of social security payments that are available. Fasana your Churchill Fellowship project focused on homelessness and poverty discrimination law. Could you tell us a bit about the impact to change in someone's accommodation status has on their lives and maybe some of the discrimination that people experiencing poverty and homelessness face. Yes so not having a accommodation certainly has a huge impact on people it's really difficult to access employment there's a huge amount of stigma that's associated with being a person that might look like they're experiencing homelessness or might be reliant on a government benefit. One issue that I came across while on my Churchill Fellowship was the issue of people on government benefits having issues accessing housing on the private rental market. There are many landlords out that that would have blunted policies that they wouldn't even look at your application if you are someone that relies on government benefit. Fortunately in some of in some of the countries that I've visited there were specific discrimination laws that prohibit that type of conduct which say that it is against the law to treat someone unfairly because of their source of income and having those laws in place has actually been quite beneficial. It's given the opportunity for prospective tenants or tenants who might have had a change in their financial status to be able to get compensation and for these particular real estate agents and landlords to change their policies as well. The issue of housing affordability is something that appears to be global it's something that I talked about a lot with many interview participants across New Zealand USA Canada and the parts of Europe that I visited as well. So having those those laws is certainly one part of it not not the entire solution but it is something that people have been able to rely on to seek redress. First I understand that when when we think about the way legislator may offer protection to people that the ACT become Australia's first jurisdiction to make it unlawful to discriminate against people as a result of their employment status when people were seeking accommodation and I'd love to hear from you how much of a change that's made here in the ACT but also more broadly whether people face other kinds of discrimination when they're seeking rental properties. So for example do you see that disability or perhaps having young children you know a thing that make it particularly difficult for people when they're looking for rental accommodation? Yeah it was part of the reason I decided to embark on a Churchill fellowship to look into poverty discrimination laws is because there was really limited data around the application of both the employment status discrimination provision and under combination status. Here they've been relatively few complaints to the ACT Human Rights Commission and so because of that I wanted to go overseas and see how similar laws were being applied in practice and it looks like that there are many cases of all this type of discrimination happening and people being able to make human rights or disability related to complaints as well as source of income complaints. So there's really in some case there really is a bit of an intersection between discrimination based on poverty as well as disability and race related grounds which is something that I came across to hear a bit while overseas. Not necessarily in relation to accessing housing but in accessing services as well. One example that I came across was a case in Vancouver where a woman named Glardersvaderk who was a middle-aged Aboriginal woman with disability was just going down to her local copy shop in downtown Vancouver and was followed around by a security guard and then when she asked why she was being followed and why her friend was being followed that security guard ended up contacting their supervisor and told them they had to leave because they were trespassing even though Glardersvaderk and Fred had every right to be there. They were better to have coffee but because of how they looked looking in a particular way there were assumptions that were made and assumptions that they might be experiencing poverty or might appear to be someone that could be homeless. It turned out that the security officers there were actually subjected to some pretty horrifying procedures. They had a zero tolerance procedure on managing people that were deemed suspicious and vagrants and so the officers were actually directed to look at key signs that might suggest that people may fall into that category. So explicitly things like having ripped clothing or dirty clothing or or begging for money or cigarettes or having bad body over odor and in that case it was found that Glardersvaderk actually experienced multiple forms of discrimination based on race and also disability. Now in Vancouver that don't have specific laws around poverty discrimination but if they did then this is a case that would really cover that intersection. In many cases as well that I came across it was actually difficult to pinpoint the reason why someone was being treated unfairly whether it is because of because I looked like someone that was facing poverty or because they were a person of a particular race or a disability. Joel the kinds of intersectionality that Fuzzad has talking about plays out in so many different contexts but I wonder if what what you see it better renting in terms of the kinds of patterns of discrimination that may act as a barrier to people being able to rent or perhaps the way they're treated when they are renting. Yeah there's a couple of patterns of discrimination that come up and unfortunately the title of the rental market is the more landlords can do that and get away with it. They don't sort of face much economic risk to be discriminatory.
when they've got plenty of other tenants. I think firstly, one which is worth questioning is discrimination not just based on the source of income, but obviously the amount of income. It's very much obviously inherent in the private rental system that whether or not you get a property would depend upon your income. Now, for some extent, that can avoid a situation when people are getting into housing stress, but pills do need housing. And this idea that just because you've got a better job that pays more, you're more entitled to get that rental is I think something that is worth actually questioning and not just taking as a given. I think probably some of the stuff I hear about most in the rental sector is around international students in particular, who I think have an unlucky combination in our rental system of not only being people of color, but also being new to Australia, being seen as sort of almost ready victims who don't necessarily know their rights, who are often at a real disadvantage in the rental market. I think there are landlords out there effectively praying on that some of these people end up in situations where they have no sense what they're entitled to and sort of have to take what's put out to them. And again, they unfortunately don't have much an alternative if they need somebody to be living. But there's certainly other data that suggests other sorts of things coming up as being issues to people. Certainly, I think people with disability, their choice, run a survey a couple of years ago, alongside the National Association of tenant organisations, National Shelter, and they found that on no cause terminations were about twice as common for people with a disability for renters in that position then for other people. And for me, that's that's the only sign of what people in that position are having a product within the rental market that maybe because you need changes to make your home accessible and living for you then you're more likely to experience retaliation perhaps in the form of an eviction notice. Joel, I think so much of what you're describing there and what we've talked about so far speaks to the fact that we so often fail to see housing as a fundamental human right. No, housing is thought about in terms of investment or property law, but we don't necessarily think about it as a fundamental human right. We'll come back after just a very short break and talk about some of those issues in more details. So, listeners, please don't go away. We'll be back with Joel and Faizana very shortly. Around the world, democracies are in crisis. Leaders have become followers, populists offer glib solutions to complex problems and people search for answers. Block out the noise. Each week on Democracy's sausage, we go deeper to bring you insights from leading scholars, journalists, and commentators to help you make sense of the world. I'm Mark Kenny from the Australian National University. Join me at the Democracy sausage hot plate every Monday and Thursday. - Listeners, welcome back. We're here with Joel, Dignum, and Faizana, Chaudry talking about accessibility and justice in the second episode of our little policy for Impod Bundle on housing. Before the break, we just started talking about rights, particularly rights when it comes to housing. And I know Faizana, you're a practicing lawyer here in the ACT. I would love you to perhaps flesh out what rights there are that protect us in the housing that we need access to. What sort of legal frameworks surround access to housing? - Yeah, sure. So unfortunately here in the ACT, we don't have an event trying right to housing under our human rights act here, but there are other provisions that we've been able to rely on in our housing law-related work at Cabri Community Law. So under the ACT Human Rights Act, there's a requirement that all ACT government policies and laws are interpreted and applied in accordance with human rights principles. And so this act does apply to government agencies like housing ACT in terms of the way that they make their decisions in relation to current and prospective housing tenants. So we've been able to rely on a couple of few rights under the act to prevent evictions into homeless and to also help clients who are experiencing homelessness to access public housing. Some of these include the protection of the family and children. So this is something which we've been able to raise where a eviction would have consequences for children and the family unit that are disproportionate to the legitimate reasons for exercising the power to evict. Another one is freedom from arbitrary interference to the home. And this is one which we've been, right, which we raised regularly where housing may have, housing STMA sought to evict tenants without having exhausted or reasonable means to avoid the need for eviction. And this is one that is raised particularly in the context of those no cause evictions, where there aren't actually any specific grounds for evicting them, just something that can be done with the 26-weeks notice. And the other one that Cabri Community Law has relied on is the cultural and other rights of Aboriginal and Trots or other people's and other minorities to defend evictions where it could be an Aboriginal tenant who isn't able to exercise their cultural heritage or distinctive spiritual practices because of their connection to their place of residents. And so we have had some success in that space. Of course, I think having a more accessible human rights complaints framework may potentially assist down the track. While we can raise these sorts of arguments at ACAT in terms of making a complaint for a breach of human rights, that is something that currently needs to go before the AST Supreme Court, which isn't the most accessible way to do that, but understand there's some legislative reform on the horizon to make that process a bit more accessible. - Fasana, before the break, you also spoke a little about your Churchill fellowship and the time that you spent in a number of countries in New Zealand, Ireland, Canada, the US and the UK. Are there examples that you saw during that project of rights-based approaches or other legal protections ensuring that people who experience systematic discrimination don't face that discrimination in the rental market or where those legal protections or recognition of human rights actually played a part in preventing homelessness? - Why particular thing I came across while my Churchill fellowship was the Illinois Homeless Bill of Rights, which is a law which has a number of human rights that relate to people experiencing homelessness and they're right to not be discriminated against. I was incredibly fortunate to meet with Robert Henderson, who is a grassroots leader with the Chicago College for Homeless and was a client of their law project. Robert was actually the plaintiff in the first litigated case under that particular legislation. Had a really horrible situation where he was experiencing homelessness, he was living on the streets and he'd just left his base to go and find some food with a friend and while he had done that, these city workers came and threw out all of his belongings into a garbage truck. So he lost his food, clothing, toiletries, medication, epitaries, family heirlooms, all that was gone and just thrown out in the garbage truck. And he was very devastated by this understandably and a person that would regularly go out and meet people experiencing homelessness and give them food and clothing and other bits. I approached him and asked about what had happened and he explained that to them. And then that community worker ended up connecting him to the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless and they ended up taking on his matter and that went to court and he was able to get a significant amount of compensation as a result of a settlement and following that, while he was still experiencing homelessness at the time, I think that it seemed like something that may have been a starting point for him to get back on track. And since then, he is now staying at his house and volunteers at a suit kitchen and don't regularly have speaking engagements where he's able to share his experience. So I was really fortunate to be able to connect with him while overseas. That's really quite a remarkable story. It's really great to hear some success in this area. Joel, given the failures of the rental market to provide people with the homes that are safe, healthy and affordable, what role do you think governments should be playing to address the issues of rental accessibility? Is it simply a case of needing to increase supply of housing? Or do we need a regulatory approach? I think I've increasingly come to feel after working this space for a good few years now that it's sort of the two of those working together. I think it would make such a big difference for renters if we had an abundance of rental properties. And that landlord's actually had a sense of, I shouldn't mistreat my tenants because they could move out and I'll struggle to get someone else in. And tenants like, oh, yes, this landlord's bad, but you know what, I can go down the street and get a good home. So that's a plice. I'm having a genuine abundance would make a really big difference. But at the same time, people shouldn't have to thread and leave their property to get somewhere else. And I think sort of the other pizza to this is also looking at the regulatory system. I think that we're seeing governments moving a bit more in this direction. I think some of what's been really typical of renters.
particularly in Constantin to Europe around having a lot of security of tenure, being out of rent long term if you want, having that control over your home. We're nowhere near that in Australia, but I think that is beginning to permeate through. And I think that's sort of the model we want to be thinking about as we reform our tenancy laws. I think probably the third part of this is a cultural change. I think that comes alongside the others, but we have a bit of an attitude in Australia of renting this temporary off-rentices as being inferior and our laws help perpetuate that. Alongside changes to the housing stock into the rental laws, I think we need to change how we think about renting as a country and have a bit more respect for people who have chosen or who often, in this case, haven't been out of choose but have ended up in the private rental sector. Joe, you talked there about the models that we've seen in some European countries that really enable people to have security of tenure over the long term and very different types of models from those that we've seen in Australia. The other debate that I've been really fascinated by that's been playing out in some countries in Europe is around Airbnb. And I think Barcelona has been one of the first and today I think the only major European city to quite seriously regulate around Airbnb because of the concern that was placing a lot of pressure on the rental market and people were unable to find security and rentals because for landlords there was often much more incentive to rent their properties out as an Airbnb. That's quite a strong step to think about regulating something like the Airbnb market, but do you think that's something that we need to do in Australia if we're going to be sure that everyone has the right to housing? I think it's time that governments absolutely need to be looking at. And I think the simple matter is when someone takes what could be a long term home for someone and turns it into short term rental accommodation, the person who does that is imposing costs on the community. They're making it harder for employers to find workers and they're also pulling people out of that community by making sure there's not enough housing available to them. Now there may also be benefits in terms of tourism but the need to be reckoning off that. And if we decide that it's a net negative and I think in many cases in Australia that is how it's playing out, then I think we need to do something to address that and governments have a role to address that. Certainly it's not just in Europe that this has been an issue. I think that it really is a new front in terms of turning housing into a commodity, at least in a rental property you can stay in a community and I think that governments are going to have to turn to this because the impact is having on so many people, not just those who are having to miss out on housing directly, is really beginning to make it into people's awareness. Yeah and of course that short term market has a real impact on the nature of communities as well as the nature of impacting on the nature of people's own housing. We've covered so many critically important issues in this conversation and as we begin to move towards the end, I'd love to hear from each of you what key reforms you would like to see, particularly thinking about the Australian context, to ensure that everyone living in this country has access to safe, healthy and affordable homes. Fasano, could you lead off perhaps in talking through some of the key reforms that you would like to see? Sure, I think we really do need to have greater access to, okay, access and availability of accessible housing, both in the private rental market but also with social housing as well, we need to have more affordability of private rentals in order to put less strain on our social housing systems and in terms of legal reform, one thing that's come out of my research is that there is value in having poverty discrimination laws in place. The ACT is the only jurisdiction that Carly has. A combination status as a pre-heated ground, I know the Northern Territory is looking to introduce similar laws but there is really anything in the works for other jurisdictions across Australia and so I think that is certainly a shortcoming and one that would assist people who are trying to access housing to not be discriminated in that process because they are someone that's experiencing poverty. Joe, what kinds of key reforms would you like to see? Thank you. I think the key reform I'm interested in is around how to and when tenancies end and I think what we want to be getting towards is a place where the tenancy ends when the tenant wants it to end and I think that's a really important part of allowing people to make a home in the rental sector. When you have a home and this is like the own occupiers get to enjoy, you can stay there for as long as you want, you can plan for your life, you can plan trees, you know, you can install a cubby house for your grandchildren and knowing that you can stay there to enjoy the benefits of that. No rent from Australia except in fact some people in public housing gets to have that sort of confidence of remaining in their home. Renters in New York City get that, you know, it is not a social suitopia but people can be renting for decades and connecting with their communities. I think we need to be moving towards that in Australia but the renters get that security of their home and the person renting to them, the landlord respects and understands that, doesn't think it as a place that they might move into at the drop of a hat for recognises someone else is home and you've got a responsibility to maintain the same duty of that. Wow, that's a really great piece of advice. As we begin to draw the conversation to a close, we have a sometimes uncomfortable last question but we would really love you to give us your one piece of advice to policymakers. As Australia begins this conversation and it's a big national discussion at the moment about housing, about housing affordability, about housing access. What one piece of advice would you like to see dominant in that discussion? Fasana? I would say when you're formulating any kind of policy, make sure you're thinking about how that policy impacts on the most marginalized in our communities. That's wonderful. And Joel. Look, I'm going to go with a bit more real politic here. I think many policymakers are unfortunately fairly influenced by, you know, think at electoral implications. But what I would say is that renting issues, housing issues are just growing all over the world in this country. I think in this century they're going to be huge and I think there's a big and growing appetite in the community for ambitious action in this space and people are hungry for it. So I would encourage much greater ambition. Fantastic. Compassion and ambition. Fantastic pieces of advice. A vice as we face the housing challenge into the future. Thank you so much for your time today. Fasana, Chaudry and Joel, dig in. It's been great having you with us on policy for import. Thank you very much. Thanks, thank you. Thank you. I think that's such a fascinating conversation and it really did raise issues not just of accessibility, but also the injustice that's currently built into our housing system and particularly our rental housing system. And I know at times we do hear about the experiences of landlords who've had really terrible experiences with what we might refer to as bad tenants. But at the moment when access is so tight and supplies so tight, the problem really is around tenants just having no ability to be able to demand that their housing is adequate to demand that things are repaired. And often people just not being able to access housing at all. So we really are in a crunch and I feel for so many groups of people, but I think if young people who are perhaps just moving out of home who don't have an employment record, who don't have even a record of a banking history, just not being able to access rentals at all because they can't prove that they will be a good tenant that will pay. So many people are just getting squeezed out. Absolutely. And housing is an essential component of life without adequate housing. We know that all sorts of elements of our condition can be affected in both Fizzana and Joel touched on the health impacts of housing insecurity. So homelessness and living in accommodation which is not adequately insulated against hot temperatures and cold temperatures. We've got lots of data that shows a relationship between increased ill health, increased hospitalisation, even increased mortality associated with housing insecurity or inadequate housing to contend with the environment around it. So it's actually a really significant health issue. One we touched on in the conversation around energy insecurity in the Northern Territory, but one that's actually apparent across the suburbs and towns of the East Coast across New South Wales and Victoria. It's a really important issue and it was so wonderful to hear the two of them talking about those issues today. Yeah, and I think kind of great of us, we have these conversations. It's so important that we don't in any way normalise inadequate housing. And that we don't normalise homelessness, no, in some research that I've been doing, I recently had a conversation with a mum, she's got five children that were living in the car, she went to emergency or she went to seek emergency accommodation and was told that there was simply nothing available. So being a single parent with five children being really concerned about those children's safety, about their health is not enough to put you at the top of the priority housing list at the moment. And we
simply cannot normalise those situations. We have to say that reform and indeed transformation is essential. Sharon, that statistic that you mentioned occasionally, that one in six Australian children live in income poverty, that resonates so frequently in the work that I do looking at the health impacts of social policy and thinking our way through this and housing is such a key element of that. We know that when young people are not able to access secure housing, when they are living with discrimination and disadvantage, that the long-term health impacts those rates of chronic disease are much higher as those children grow and age. And so it is something that deserves much more attention tying together the policy themes across the different silos and thinking about the whole of life impacts of adequate housing for our whole population. Yeah, Unequator, you're absolutely right. And of course, this is a real challenge particularly in the way we see government structured silos between departments when we see the way funding models work, both funding to government agencies but also funding to non-government service providers. You know, we have models that are just not fit for purpose and not able to get to the complexity of the issues that we're facing. We've also talked a lot, Aadagrider, about wellbeing and a well-being approach. And I think as we move into the new year, we'll again return to the ways in which thinking about a well-being economy might help us to develop different models and to break down some of those silos because we're looking at different starting points and we're looking at different outcomes. Absolutely, absolutely. So, listeners, I'm sure we will continue to explore these issues over the weeks ahead and over the years ahead, particularly as we watch the current federal government contending with a housing approach which hopefully begins to relieve some of these housing tensions and stresses across our population, particularly housing affordability and housing access. So, we would be very keen to hear your thoughts on the episode. We will leave a link to the publications that we've discussed in the show notes. We do love hearing from our audience, so please reach out to us on Twitter @appolicyforum or you can send us an email to
[email protected] or you can join us on our Facebook page @policyforum.pod. We will be back next week. From me, Anna Greta Hunter, I'll see you next week. And for me, Sharon Bezzo, it's bye bye for now.
PodcastTranscript AI