The real 'housos' : reclaiming identity and place

Public – or, as we are now more likely to refer to it, social housing – represents a very small and indeed falling proportion of Australia’s housing stock, especially when compared to most European countries. From a peak of just under 6 per cent of dwellings nationally in the 1980s (10 per cent in South Australia), by 2006 social housing represented around 4 per cent of housing stock. Government subsidies for low- income rental housing have been politically contested since the earliest federal government intervention following the Second World War, but at least until the early 1990s public housing provided affordable and secure housing for those households who could not afford to house themselves appropriately through owner occupation or private rental. Some 70 years beyond its inception and despite a similar situation of chronic undersupply of housing in major cities, and with the least affordable housing internationally, public housing is now perceived by many as a highly problematic form of tenure which exacerbates or even produces social problems rather than ameliorating them. As in the UK and USA, mass- produced estates containing concentrations of public housing are frequently characterised as incubators for crime and anti-social behaviour, residents’ unemployment and poor educational outcomes. State-owned housing – not only the policy of providing assistance, but its actual physical form and location – is now widely described as a ‘failed experiment’ and has emerged as the target of a concerted campaign of reform and redevelop-ment. A striking illustration of the public perception of public housing neighbourhoods in Australia can be seen in the popular television comedy Housos, which is discussed.