Public Housing No Longer Needs to Stand Out

05 Sep 2012 - Simon Johanson from http://news.domain.com.au

A major overhaul of Melbourne's run-down public-housing estates is transforming the way people live, reducing anti-social behaviour and regenerating neighbourhoods.

Inner-city estates in Kensington, Carlton, Fitzroy, Richmond and Prahran are in the midst of a $600 million makeover that includes a mix of private houses among public tenants.

Crumbling buildings have made way for new homes, although most of the high-rise towers symbolic of Melbourne's housing estates remain.

Next month, work will finish on 98 private and 50 public homes on the corner of Keppel and Cardigan streets in Carlton.

Another 188 federally funded homes in Prahran's Horace Petty estate and 207 in Elizabeth Street, Richmond, will be finished early next year. And tenants will soon move in to 152 new homes in the Fitzroy Housing Estate.

Many of the architect-designed public homes are indistinguishable from private ones, a deliberate attempt to ''de-institutionalise'' public housing.

The 10-year state government-funded project to regenerate the Kensington housing estate on Flemington Road with a 50-50 mix of public and private dwellings had ''normalised'' tenants' homes, removed the stigma of public housing and given occupants a sense of ownership, said George Housakos, chief executive of Urban Communities, which manages homes on the estate.

''There's been an immediate reduction in anti-social behaviour, rental arrears are very low and occupancy is at 100 per cent,'' he said.

An unusually large number (about 71 per cent) of the private homes in Carlton's Cemetery Road project - to be finished in October - were sold to owner-occupiers, developer Australand's residential manager Robert Pradolin said. Most city flats usually sell to investors.

Under the rejuvenation process there has been no net loss of public housing, but a chronic shortage of places in the system was still a problem, said Sarah Toohey from Australians for Affordable Housing, adding that a billion-dollar fund was needed to build at least 20,000 new low-income rental properties each year across Australia.

The Baillieu government has foreshadowed an overhaul of public housing that may include privatisation, higher rents, short-term leases and less secure tenure for residents. But in the last two state budgets, the government had provided no new funds for public-housing construction, said Opposition housing spokesman Richard Wynne.

''Our fear is that they're going to take the opportunity to privatise some of the most valuable inner-city sites,'' he said.