maximising access to CRA payments. Some CHOs are required under agreement to ensure rents do not exceed 25–30 per cent of incomes (as in public housing), income is taken to mean pre-CRA amounts, which is
financed and subsidised strategies are 24 per cent more expensive in the first year alone and these costs accumulate with each new tranche of privately financed dwellings.
Under privately financed models, recurrent expenses continue for a considerably longer duration, to fulfil long-term financing obligations. This places a heavy burden on public finances and can limit new or alternative infrastructure investments. This finding mirrors that of the UK National Audit Office (NAO) on the abolished PFI initiative (NAO 2015; 2018b). As shown in Figure 9, below, a significant disadvantage of the operating subsidy model comes at the end of Year 20, when operating subsidies would still be required to be paid out on dwellings built in the later part of the program, unlike a capital grant model.
Figure 9: Annual expenditure under capital grant vs. operating subsidy programs
Note: All values are represented as net present value (NPV) and do not include any costs associated with CRA payments.
Source: Lawson, Pawson et al. (2018).
It should be noted that an operating subsidy is a recurrent expense to government—it is not an
investment in the public estate, building a portfolio of permanent social housing assets. Unlike recurrent operating subsidies, capital investment in the form of conditional grants or retained equity contributes to the public estate and provides a useful hedge against inflation. This value can later be used to reinvest in renovation or replacement of stock over time.
Upfront capital investment can be even more strategic and purposeful. A nuanced capital investment strategy can address spatially differentiated needs and, importantly, efficiencies in procurement costs (especially land costs). It can also drive innovation in construction and respond to changing market conditions to deliver a range of policy goals, from skilled employment to transport mobility and energy-efficient design.
3.7
The most effective pathway for Australia
The Productivity Commission (2014: 2) stresses the urgent need to reform the way
governments invest in Australian infrastructure, calling for better decision-making, funding and financing choices. This imperative applies equally to social housing, where current investment strategies are not only unproductive, they are failing to address current and future needs.
$- $2.0 $4.0 $6.0 $8.0 $10.0 $12.0 $14.0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 An n u al Pa ym en ts ($bi lli on s)
This Inquiry examined diverse investment pathways that generate social housing. Dominant trends in housing policy have favoured demand-side approaches and relied on private financing of landlords and increasingly subsidies to investors. This has proven costly for governments and ineffective in steering supply, maintaining and retaining outcomes, with too many very low- income households left unable to access secure affordable housing, homeless or suffering severe housing stress in the private rental market.
Responding to this need inevitably requires resources and some of these can be derived from more equitable distribution of assistance than is currently the case. Rebalancing both direct and indirect assistance from speculative investors and established home owners to landlords with the well-defined social purpose and their tenants would address widespread concerns about fairness and inequities in Australian tax and housing assistance policies (Groenhart 2014, Duncan, Hodgson et al, 2018). Reforms to capital gains and negative gearing provisions have the potential to provide significant additional resources to address substantial levels of housing need and enable investment to flow towards the maintenance and expansion of social housing (Ecclestone, Verdouw et al. 2018: 34). However, such reforms are far from certain and the case for investing in social housing infrastructure should not depend on their progress.
Unfounded policy assumptions operate as a brake on more effective initiatives to increase the supply of social housing and need to be challenged. These include the belief that transferred assets will allow private investment to generate new social housing supply, thereby reducing public debt and the demand for future subsidies.
Excessive reliance on commercial finance, of short term and high interest, not only increased operating costs for non-government providers in the 2000s, but also increased the
Commonwealth subsidy they required to meet their operating costs (Lawson, Berry et al, 2014, Darcy, 2019, Southern Cross Housing, 2018). For growth the primary motor proved to be public
equity—most notably and durably under the Social Housing Initiative (KPMG, 2012). During the
2010s, less efficient private financing dampened the productivity of the social housing sector rather than increased it (EY, 2017). Heeding this evidence, the federal government established the NHFIC, which is now issuing bonds to provide more efficient longer-term lower-cost loans.
Early experience of bond issuance (NHFIC, 2019) shows real promise—but financing alone is
not sufficient to address deep affordability needs.
In the absence of public equity and operating subsidies, the core purpose of social housing provision has drifted ‘upwards’ to serve ‘affordable’ rental tenants and home purchasers (Randolph, Troy et al. 2018). So called ‘affordable’ rents, set at 75% market value, are not affordable to low income households in most metropolitan markets. There are tenants in community housing who remain in housing stress (AIHW, 2018). A subsidy program defining ‘affordability’ in this way may serve Q2 households, as did NRAS, but will leave the much larger group of Q1 households in rental stress (Lawson, Pawson et al, 2018).
Secondly, state and territory land banking, valuation and planning policies, maximising the value of government-owned land, have increased the cost of providing social housing and in turn the subsidies required to produce it. Western Australia shows the way in how land bankers can work more collaboratively with CHOs to ensure affordable housing outcomes, but more could be done on a greater scale and in all jurisdictions (Randolph, Troy et al. 2018).
Further, some state housing authority strategies are encumbering CHOs with the management of public stock that is in poor condition and which in some cases requires sales to cover operating costs (as in Tasmania), which could undermine a potentially productive route to new supply. Finally, growth reliant on self-financed redevelopment involving demolition, densification and sale of units, offers an opportunistic but also finite strategy to increase units of much smaller size and higher density. These strategies, as seen in New South Wales and Victoria, involve significant community displacement and also pose complex development risks.
Overall, recent market-based policy strategies focussing on asset management transfers, densification and mixed redevelopment have failed to deliver a sustainable or productive pathway for Australian social housing.
A change in direction is required which not only builds on best past practices but learns the lessons of international experience. Strategic long-term public investment is the most effective route to boost social housing production. The needs-based capital investment pathway
recommended by this Inquiry draws on the tools of Australia’s more productive past and builds on promising reforms in efficient and mission-driven financing (via NHFIC and CEFC).
Furthermore, a more effective and joined-up national strategy and regulatory framework can ensure a range of social, economic and environmental policy objectives are also achieved, via well-designed social housing programs that promote more inclusive housing markets, fairer access to opportunities and more energy-efficient living environments.