Reforming Social Housing Policy: Financing And Tenant Autonomy

Write a policy brief, Writing policy briefs is a particular skill, used widely in government and non-government agencies to provide guidance to policy makers. There are many types of brief - but, we ask you to provide a brief intended for an internal audience (that is, for the Minister and senior staff within the department).

This type of brief would generally not be published. The aim is to give a short summary of an issue (as it is discussed in a report), canvass arguments for and against, identify the parties involved and their opinions, to highlight any possible implications for government policy and recommend possible courses of action.

For this brief, imagine that you work in the relevant government department. Do some research here - address the brief to the appropriate Minister and Department at State or Federal level.

Key issues highlighted by the policy

Report: Reforming social housing; financing and tenant autonomy: Michael Potter

Analyzing on how to ensure housing affordability to tenants

Key issues: The reason why this report is important is because, there have been an increase in protest from tenant on housing due to affordability and policies of managing the houses.

Purpose: The purpose of the review is to analyze the policy on social housing and recommend the best step to the government.

Coming up with policy requires an extensive process. In most case, policy-making requires wider consultation between various stakeholders to come up with a sound decision. The task of this assignment is to consider one of the policies and how they come up with recommendations from the findings they have gotten. Apart from that, the assignment is going to recommend various issues based on the recommendations of a policy. From the management perspective, the policy makers mainly try to find key issues that affect the subjects and recommend whatever necessary. However, it can be noted that there are some limitations the policy was because of a mistake that might have been done during the policy-making process.  The task of this assignment would be based on the policy of reforming social housing; financing and tenant autonomy. The policy dwells on the matter of housing in the Australian nation. The core issue in this policy is on the amount that is imposed on the buyers when purchasing either community housing, indigenous housing or public housing

Reforming social housing; financing and tenant autonomy  

In the policy on reforming social housing, Michael Potter illustrates various issues that show vividly the state in which the Australian community is suffering when it comes to the matters of housing. Many households in Australia resides on various housings that have been allocated by the authority (Parsell, Petersen and Culhane, 2016: pp.1540). The examples of housings that are available in this place include indigenous housing, public housing, indigenous community housing and the community housing. However, there are several challenges that the residents in this area face on daily basis.

Discussion

The report from Michael Potter is mainly concerned with how the Australians can be able to afford the few housings available in the country. From the findings, it is evident that many people who live in these housings pay monthly rent. One can either rent the social housing or the private housing (Habibis, 2018: p.167). There exist the public housings which are owned by the government. The comparison of price between the public and private housing is that the charges on public housing are affordable as compared to the private ones (Valença, 2015). The higher prices charged on private and social housing has made very man people migrate from these housings to the community housing which their prices are better off. The increased shifting means that the issue of affordability needs to be addressed here.

Purpose of the review

Considering the arguments in this report, it is mainly biased at pointing fingers to the government on its failure to come up with guidelines on housing. Consequently, other policymakers see that the problem of finance evident in the sector of housing is as a result of an increase in population in Australia. The more the population, the increase in the demand of the housing areas. However, the affordable public housings are few and the higher population cannot fit in these places (Manzi and Darcy,2017: pp.150). The owners of the private housings have taken advantage of the high population and hiked the prices of the private housings.

Michael Potter’s position on the stalemate facing the housing sector in Australia is that the upcoming tenants should be given more priority than the people who have been dwelling in the places. The reason is that this would assist in accommodating the high population that has longed for places to stay. The above recommendation may be applicable; however, the challenge is that the report has not established the basis of denying the long-time dwellers chance to be in the area. It is sometimes impossible to impose such policy because when one is willing or have already paid the money it is difficult to deny the person a chance to get the area (Lund, 2017). Apart from that, the report has addressed the matter of charges, in that the amount to be charged should be proportional to the quality of the specific area. The policy is good considering the challenges the tenants have been facing in the past. For instance, there exist emergency in a housing area but the order hesitates to respond, such factors should be considered in assigning the price of the housing. Certainly, the challenges with this policy are that the population of the country has grown tremendously and the demand for residential is high. Most tenants do not even consider the quality of the surrounding.

It is evident that the current policies are favoring the private owners and but they are a blow to the household. The reason is that more than 400, 000 households struggle much to get the amount required to get the housings while the owners of the areas do not do much to improve the quality of the places (Potter, 2017: p.14). When viewing the recommendations elaborated by Michael Potter, the minister should now that the population of people who wants to stay in these housing has increased and there should be a harmonizing of the prices.

Policy-making and its consultation process

Another issue in this report is the introduction of the subsidized system in renting the housings. The author illustrates the subsidized system through aggregator policy. In this policy, the government would solicit for funds and provide it to the housing owners. The funds would be used to improve the quality of the housing apart from reducing the cost of renting the housing. The policy would make the housing affordable to the tenants. However, this may not be a permanent solution because the government would be taking the money in form of a loan and paying the debt may be heavy (Wood, 2018: pp.100).

Based on the complains raised by the tenants it is important for the government to take a step-in order to manage the situation. There are various issues that have been recommended by the Michael Potter in this report. The first solution is reducing the number of housings (Lee and Reed, 2014: pp.1080). For example, the government can put community and public housing as one in order for management to ensure that the tenants are satisfied. On the other hand, the issue of finance is the main issue. The government is trying to bring bond aggregator which would assist the tenants to borrow loans on the behalf of the government.

The claims raised by the author of the report is consistent with the recommendations in that, they would ensure that the tenant satisfaction is achieved while harmonizing the prices of these housings (Van Dooren, Voets and Winters, 2015: pp.1070). Secondly, the implementation of the recommendations would ensure that the owners of the housing put every requirement in place before delivering the property to the tenants.

The first main challenge is that the quality of public housing is unsatisfying. For instance, the tenants in these areas complaint that the portions reserved for them less compared to their vast needs. This is not enough the residents also complain that accessing these public housing takes a long time than ever like for example many of the tenants claim that they have to wait for more than eight years to get ownership of the available portions. On the other hand, the prices for purchasing the housing is high (Gibb, 2016).  Sometimes some institutions turn the policymaking process to be a one man’s show. The government as a management body comes up with policies that control how citizens operate and the protocols they should always follow when something happens (Gurran and Phibbs, 2016: pp.60)

Michael Potter’s report has raised several issues in connection with housing. The aim of the report was to try to solve the stalemate in the housing sector. From the findings, the minister should be aware of the following:

•    The population has increased and more people are demanding the housing places.
•    Diving the housing sector in many management hands is not appropriate, it would be good if some housings like social housing would have been combined with the public housing. This would improve services.
•    Being on the waiting list have been a persistent problem of households, in order to avoid this the number of years one can stay on the housing should be limited to allow others access the places
•    The policy of loan aggregator may not solve the issue of the cost of housing, it will only increase government debts. It is good, that the government consult with private owners to get a solution.  

The minister is expected to respond to this report by organizing a meeting with the author and analyzing key issues in the report and the recommendations and there after providing way forward to the tenants

References 

Gibb, K., 2016. Housing Finance in the UK: an Introduction. Macmillan International Higher Education.

Gurran, N. and Phibbs, P., 2016. 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams': Planning, Housing Supply and Aff ordability in Urban Australia. Built Environment, 42(1), pp.55-71.

Habibis, D., 2018. Ideology vs context in the neoliberal state’s management of remote Indigenous housing reform. THE NEOLIBERAL STATE, RECOGNITION AND INDIGENOUS RIGHTS, p.167.

Lee, C.L. and Reed, R.G., 2014. The relationship between housing market intervention for first-time buyers and house price volatility. Housing studies, 29(8), pp.1073-1095.

Lund, B., 2017. Understanding housing policy. Policy Press.

Manzi, T. and Darcy, M., 2017. Organisational research: conflict and power within UK and Australian social housing organisations. In Social constructionism in housing research(pp. 142-158). Routledge.

Parsell, C., Petersen, M. and Culhane, D., 2016. Cost offsets of supportive housing: Evidence for social work. British Journal of Social Work, 47(5), pp.1534-1553.

Potter, M., 2017. The trouble with social housing. Policy: A Journal of Public Policy and Ideas, 33(2), p.14.

Valença, M.M., 2015. Social rental housing in HK and the UK: Neoliberal policy divergence or the market in the making?. Habitat International, 49, pp.107-114.

Van Dooren, W., Voets, J. and Winters, S., 2015. Autonomy and reregulation: Explaining dynamics in the Flemish social housing sector. Public Administration, 93(4), pp.1068-1083.

Wood, A.G., 2018. Viva La Revolución Social! Postrevolutionary Tenant Protest and State Housing Reform in Veracruz, Mexico. In Cities Of Hope (pp. 88-128). Routledge.