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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
There's a new bill before federal parliament calling for housing to be considered a fundamental human right.
The bill, introduced by independent federal parliamentarians Kylea Tink and David Pocock, would require the government to create a 10-year National Housing and Homelessness Plan.
One part of the bill states housing should be considered a fundamental human right for all Australians. Here's how this would work.
Since its election in 2022, the Albanese government has had to fight political battles to pass its housing policies.
This includes the Housing Australia Future Fund: a $10 billion fund to provide an annual $500 million for social and affordable rental housing. It passed the parliament last year.
There's also the "Help to Buy" shared equity scheme. Under this scheme, 10,000 households a year would be eligible for a government equity contribution of up to 40% of the purchase price of a new home. It's yet to pass the parliament.
But many in the community continue to struggle with unaffordable rents, barriers to home ownership and rising rates of homelessness.
Housing and homelessness problems are complex because they crossover different areas of policy and different levels of government. There are many agencies that do housing policy.
But so far, the government has not had a clear plan. Its election promise to develop a National Housing and Homelessness Plan is still under development. And at the moment, it does not appear to be addressing important policy areas like tax and finance.
[...] Tink and Pocock have also taken up our research and turned it into the National Housing and Homelessness Plan Bill.
The bill would require the housing minister of the day to develop and implement a ten year National Housing and Homelessness Plan. This would mean taking a view of housing policy beyond three-year election cycles.
The legislation would also set some basic directions for the government's plan, including "ensuring that everyone in Australia has adequate housing," and "preventing and ending homelessness." This reflects the legislation's human rights-based approach.
The legislation would also require the housing minister to be collaborative and establish some new sources of information and advice for government. This includes a "consumer council," including people with experience of homelessness. This would operate alongside the existing National Housing Supply and Affordability Council: an independent group providing the government with expert advice. The consumer council would be able to escalate matters directly to the minister to ensure it's heard.
The existing government agency Housing Australia would be nominated as the lead agency assisting the minister with the plan. A new government officer, the National Housing and Homelessness Advocate, would independently investigate housing policy issues and monitor the progress against the plan. The housing minister would also be required to periodically report to parliament on progress.
At the end of the ten years, the minister would be required to review and develop a new plan.
Importantly, it would still be for the government of the day to decide what's in the plan. The legislation sets objectives and directions, but not policy details. The legislation does not say, for example, "thou shalt repeal negative gearing"! One government might devise a more market-orientated plan, while another might plan for greater non-market housing provision.
[...] The bill formally recognizes housing as a human right for two reasons.
First, it serves as the constitutional basis for the legislation. The right to adequate housing is a human right under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which Australia ratified almost 50 years ago.
This brings it within the parliament's "external affairs" power. The parliament relied on this power and the human right to housing when it passed the original legislation establishing the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation (now Housing Australia). Basically, it gives the government the legal authority to make such a plan.
Secondly, an effective plan that's going to work across different policy areas and bring in the range of institutions needs a place to start. Human rights provides a way to organize the policy across all the different branches of government that need to be involved.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 09 2024, @05:43PM (2 children)
Denmark has effectively had a basic right to housing for a long long time now.
https://www.spur.org/news/2022-08-31/housing-for-everyone-the-danish-way [spur.org]
Back in the 1980s near Copenhagen there was a large community of "tiny houses" each with a TV (aerial reception antenna outside) heat, bed, bathroom, and a basic kitchen.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 10 2024, @01:24AM (1 child)
If too many people are crap, it doesn't matter how well the houses are built. You might have difficulty building the houses in the first place - the people involved might all be trying to figure out ways to siphon money away whether legally or illegally - so the project takes years longer, costs more etc.
How to have fewer crap people while still preserving freedoms? That could be a difficult problem but I suspect that many parents do want to do a good job raising children but can't. So perhaps the government should take advantage of known science-based education stuff, and taxpayer money (better to pay for this than pay more for prisons?), etc to help such parents out.
It's not concrete that's the foundation of a country but its people.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 10 2024, @05:59PM
Absolutely it's the people, but if you read the article: Denmark actively mixes their socioeconomic classes, rich and poor (and every other contrast) in the same neighborhoods. That goes a long way toward erasing "fear of going over there" and of believing that certain behaviors are acceptable in your own neighborhood. The US made a half-hearted effort at school busing, which went a very long way toward eroding racism (at its root: fear of people of a different color), but lately school integration is looking more and more like Trump's cabinet: one token black guy just to prevent people saying it's all white.
Some people can maintain a nice home without stainless steel toilets and poured concrete walls. They get to live in those neighborhoods they choose. People who don't learn how to maintain themselves in "polite company" houses will find themselves with progressively fewer choices in housing, but even then just because they end up in a "high strength / low maintenance" structure doesn't mean they should be socially isolated in an island of only people who have their issues.
> the people involved might all be trying to figure out ways to siphon money away whether legally or illegally - so the project takes years longer, costs more etc.
In the US public housing is financed from a quiltwork of funding sources, many projects use up to 20 sources of financial support. In Denmark there is just one. Which method do you think takes years longer, costs more, and is more ripe for fraudulent use of the funds?
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]