The Deep Six

While conservative governments may have reduced or re-directed some funding away from the tenant unions, the infrastructure of tenancy advice organisations remains largely intact. Paris writes of the struggle for sole parents (mostly female) in trying to enter the home ownership stakes. With increasing waiting times for public rental housing most state governments experimented with new home ownership schemes to assist those who found it difficult to jump through the hoops required by the traditional lenders (read Banks). A decade later these lending schemes have been wound back or placed on hold with many of the clients seeing financial counsellors or community based lawyers. In the not such a long period since the book's publication and the Howard/ Costello budgets and the re-negotiation of the Commonwealth State Housing Agreement, the community sector has witnessed at least a partial dismantling of public housing as we knew it in thel970s and 1980s. It is unlikely that we will see any net addition to the stock of public housing in most states. For even the poorest and most desperate, public housing is an increasingly scarce commodity and there is a likelihood of further cuts and sell offs of the choicest units

Economic history · Political science · History · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism