What is the difference between public housing and social housing?
Australia’s first publicly owned housing was the houses in The Rocks and Millers Point purchased by the Sydney Harbour Trust in 1900.
Under the NSW Housing Act of 1912, and the NSW Housing Board planned the first public housing estates in Australia. The then treasurer Roland Dacey said NSW was going to build a ‘garden city’ in Sydney for a healthy lifestyle. When completed it was named Dacyville.
The federal government has always deemed public housing as a state matter and provides some funding assistance depending on the project. This has varied over time
In the 1970’s the Whitlam, through the Department for Urban and Regional Development, the minister at the time, Tom Uren, brokered deals with state and local governments on public housing. Glebe, the Glebe Estate, and Woolloomooloo, guided by the green bans, the BLF and Jack Mundey.
In the 1980’s the Hawke government expanded the scope of public housing in partnership with state governments to include students, artists, refugees and more.
In the late 1980’s and into the 1990’s the ideology that the market not governments is the most effective way of dealing with societal matters such as housing resulted in a gradual decline in public housing construction, repairs and maintenance and an increase in the waiting list.