The stark figure of $2.5 million in rent and maintenance arrears being written off by the ACT Housing Trust smacks of mismanagement. True, it represents more than just the past year’s unpaid rent. In fact it is several year’s arrears. That may lessen the overall annual amount, however, it also indicated that the problem must have gone on longer than what should have been acceptable. The amount has to be put in context. There are some 100,000 dwellings in ACT, 12.5 per cent are Housing Trust dwellings. It means there are about 12,500 Housing Trust dwellings in the ACT. The $2.5 million, therefore, is on average $200 a dwelling. That is about one a half week’s rent per dwelling. It is difficult to imagine the private sector being caught out in such a way. No-one wants the Housing Trust to behave totally like the private sector. The private sector is in the housing sector purely for profit. The Housing Trust has social obligations. The trust’s tenants are typically people with children, without jobs and without much cash _ the very people shunned by private-sector landlords and the very people unable to post bonds that could obviate the possibility of tenants leaving with unpaid rent. There are some signs that this write-off is an attempt to clean the slate and begin with a new regime. Now is a good time for that. To some extent Canberra’s public-housing administration has been a victim of the recession. While other states slumped in the recession and had long public-housing waiting lists, Canberra was seen as a place of higher employment and opportunity and shorter public-housing lists. It attracted interstate tenants. With the recession ended, some tenants and left _ and left unpaid bills behind them.
Naturally, in an election environment, the issue has become a political one. Opposition housing spokesman Greg Cornwell is rightly appalled at the writing off of such an amount with the stroke of a pen. On the other hand, the Minister for Housing, David Lamont, said the bad debts had been one of the reasons for a review of the ACT Housing Trust. Whether that review solves the problem is another matter. It will be impossible to eliminate arrears in public housing. If rent is behind it is very difficult to throw children into the street because of the misdeeds of parents. However, some steps have been taken by the Act Housing Trust to help. A scheme to take rent directly from pay and social welfare payments has been introduced after some soul-searching. It seemed a little patronising. However, many tenants, especially those with dependant children, were no doubt pleased to see the rent come out of wages or welfare payments before their spouse could spend it on other things. It is this sort of lateral-thinking, educative approach that will marry the social aims of public housing with the administrative aims of getting the rent in.
Punitive measures are self-defeating. Why have public housing if it is to be run one purely pay-or-be-evicted market terms The trust has put on hold the sale of public housing pending various planning reviews. These sales should be brought back as quickly as possible. There is no surer way of keeping families in homes than giving them a hope of ownership. That said, there is no point putting families into the clutches of the banks or leaving them at the mercy of the Federal Government’s interest-rate policy. None the less some suitable buying scheme needs to be put into place reasonably quickly.