Andrews’ housing plan is ambitious and sensible — the backlash is not

We’re all content to blame governments of all levels and stripes for the housing crisis. But the reaction in some quarters to Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’ ambitious housing plan, announced on Wednesday, illustrates exactly why politicians have been disinclined to embrace reform.

Despite a suite of measures designed to make life easier for property developers — accelerating development applications out of planning purgatory, expediting approval processes for developments with a proportion of affordable housing, shifting planning powers away from councils — developer lobby groups reacted to the plan by instantly demanding tax cuts, claiming they couldn’t afford to build in the current supply chain and labour environment.

NIMBY-dominated councils with huge backlogs of development applications, or that had rejected huge numbers of them, hit back at Andrews for calling them out; a local government figure said the plan “undermines the democratic principle of giving local communities a say in local decisions”.

Samantha Ratnam, leader of the Victorian Greens — one of the worst councils for waiting times is Greens-controlled — claimed the Andrews plan “could well be the end of public housing in Victoria” and did nothing for renters.

The Financial Review ran a weird piece that criticised Andrews for high property taxes, saying the planning change “has to be applauded” but criticising it for “centralising decisions in Andrews’ own office”.

And, inevitably, beneficiaries of the parasitic short-term rental industry attacked the tax Andrews proposes to levy on them. A woman with not one, not two, but three Airbnb properties was given space to complain that she was just a single mum trying to make ends meet. Andrews thus gets attacked for not doing anything to help renters, and for taxing an industry that we know directly pushes rents up and reduces affordability.

It may come as a shock to Crikey readers used to criticism of Andrews here, but his housing package is rightly ambitious and sensible, especially regarding its releasing of government land for higher-density housing with an affordable component, and removing planning permit requirements for single houses and granny flats.

But it needs to be judged in the context of what Andrews is doing elsewhere. As experts like Cameron Murray have argued, simply reducing planning restrictions won’t get developers building more dwellings — they’ll only do so on a timetable that maximises their profits. A necessary concomitant of Andrews’ package is a big investment in social housing as well, and the premier is already delivering that. In 2020 he announced a $5 billion spend to deliver 12,000 new social housing dwellings.

That’s why — as Crikey detailed earlier this week — Victoria has left NSW in the dust on public sector dwelling approvals over the past two years. And that’s on top of around 800 social housing units that will be funded by Victoria’s share of the Albanese government’s $2 billion social housing investment announced back in June.

It’s also why the claim by the Greens — the NIMBYest of the NIMBYs, who love more housing but just not near their voters, please — that Andrews was going to “end” public housing was such arrant nonsense. It’s true that new approvals don’t reflect the net figure, as older social housing stock is replaced. But the alternative is to leave social housing tenants in deteriorating, poor-quality, older housing, with its accompanying health impacts.

Andrews deserves blame for failing to adequately invest in social housing for most of his first two terms, but he equally deserves credit for a huge turnaround in investment since 2020.

This argument has coalesced into a brawl over 44 substandard, post-war public housing blocks that Andrews proposes to demolish and replace in a program that will take until 2051 to complete. The blocks fall well short of current standards on noise, energy efficiency and size, as well as a host of other measures. But Andrews is under attack, mainly from the Greens, because the redevelopment will include not just affordable housing but market housing too — the Greens have accused Andrews of choosing to “privatise at least two-thirds of all these sites”.

Even so, the sites involved will — according to the Victorian government’s figures — increase social housing on the sites by 10%, and see three times as many people living on the sites when completed. But not fast enough, according to a group of Melbourne planning academics who emerged to also attack Andrews. In a paper apparently released yesterday — good luck finding it online — six RMIT academics criticised the plan because it “will not realise a net gain supply within the next decade”.

This argument doesn’t make sense as a criticism of the redevelopment project. The current residents of the towers proposed for redevelopment will be found homes. It is really a complaint that the net impact on total social housing will increase demand for the period in which the new housing — plus the 10% increase — is built. It is thus a complaint that the Victorian government should be spending even more than it already is on social housing — which is a completely legitimate call, but unrelated to the redevelopment of the towers.

The academics also claimed that — to use a journalist’s phrasing — “dislocating low-income communities was known to cause serious harm and even death”. Another expert described the towers as “incredibly tight-knit communities in ways that private high-density buildings are not”.

So now Andrews isn’t just ending social housing, he’s killing social housing tenants.

The same argument was used to oppose the relocation of social housing tenants from the monstrous eyesore known as the Sirius building in the Rocks in Sydney, a concrete blight that tragically remains undemolished. The sale of that building, first proposed by the Baird government, generated $150 million in revenue for the NSW government, which has since funded social housing for more than 600 people — more than three times the 200 people housed in the Sirius building. But the sale was demonised as an attack on social housing and the “community” living in the building commanding some of the most remarkable urban views on the planet — never mind that 400 extra people who desperately needed social housing found a home as a result.

The sight of comfortable academics and planning experts, along with commentators and journalists, urging that low-income people be left to endure substandard public housing in the name of “community” is nauseating. The losers from this mindset aren’t just the current tenants living in accommodation that middle-class Melburnians wouldn’t tolerate for a minute, but people on waiting lists who will wait longer for a net increase in the supply of social housing that would result if opponents had their way.

Between greedy property developers, whingeing business columnists, NIMBY Greens and academics keen to condemn social housing tenants to misery, good luck to any politician trying to respond effectively on housing.

Is Dan Andrews doing right by Victorians with this housing plan? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.