‘I thought we’d look after people’: 60,000 homes needed for vulnerable Victorians

Victoria needs to invest up to $30 billion building 60,000 new social housing homes to catch up to the rest of the country and meet a shortfall for struggling families, the state’s independent infrastructure advisory has recommended as its top – and most expensive – priority.

Infrastructure Victoria, in its draft 30-year strategy released on Tuesday, called on the state to build 4000 new social housing homes a year for 15 years. Social housing represents only 2.8 per cent of all homes in Victoria, compared with a national average of 4 per cent. Social housing includes both community housing (run by not-for-profits) and public housing (run by the state government).

Cory Memery at his former home on a Carlton public housing estate.Credit: Chris Hopkins

“This is the lowest of any Australian state or territory. Victoria needs an additional 60,000 social homes to meet the backlog of demand for homes. Building this number will also get Victoria closer to reaching the national average,” Infrastructure Victoria said in its report.

Cory Memery, a long-time public housing tenant and advocate, believes the state has abrogated its duties to the most vulnerable Victorians, with more than 53,500 households on the waitlist for social housing. Forty per cent of them will wait for more than two years before they are allocated a home.

“I never thought Australia was a country like this. I thought we’d look after people like myself, who don’t have as much as others,” said Memery, who specifically wants to see investment in public housing.

The Productivity Commission’s report last month on government services revealed Victoria’s net recurrent expenditure on social housing was the lowest in the country per capita, though the state’s capital expenditure was the highest thanks to the Big Housing Build.

Infrastructure Victoria said another $19 billion to $30 billion should be invested in social housing over the coming 15 years, though $6 billion to $9.5 billion could be saved by using Crown land, or plots owned by local governments and not-for-profits.

But the Allan government is rezoning and selling land to make way for private housing. Up to 500 private homes will be built at the former VicRoads site in Kew, 10 per cent of which need to be affordable.

Infrastructure Victoria chief executive Dr Jonathan Spear said he did not have a view on whether that should be public housing or community housing.

“Given the scale of the demand, we probably need all the different types of delivery model to achieve the investment that we need,” Spear said.

Infrastructure Victoria said the government could continue to pursue public-private partnerships and ground-lease models so that social housing and private homes could be built in mixed developments.

The Allan government is knocking down and rebuilding all 44 public towers in Melbourne and replacing them with a mix of private and social housing homes. The number of social housing tenants on the sites is set to increase by 10 per cent – to 11,000 – by 2051.

Memery, the Save Our Public Housing Collective spokesman, said this would make no difference to the waiting list and any new investment in social housing had to include publicly managed homes.

The most vulnerable people tend to live in public housing, given community providers have the flexibility to choose their tenants.

“The government can’t wash their hands of being their landlord,” Memery said.

The total number of social housing homes grew by 4067 in the nine years to 2024 because of growth in the community housing sector, which is run by not-for-profits. The number of public homes fell by 181 over the same period, according to Productivity Commission data.

A 2020 state government promise to build 12,000 social and affordable homes is three years behind schedule, though 80 per cent of the program is expected to finish by the end of 2026. To cut costs, government agency Homes Victoria is building 1551 fewer social housing homes on government land than planned, with community housing providers picking up the shortfall.

A Homes Victoria spokeswoman said more than 10,100 homes had been completed or were under way through the Big Housing Build and Regional Housing Fund.

“We are delivering more new and renewed social and affordable housing for those who need it – that’s why we’re investing more into building social and affordable homes than any other state,” she said.

The Victorian Council of Social Service said investment in social housing had not met the growing population and demand, while Council to Homeless Persons chief executive Deborah Di Natale said there was no excuse for inaction.

“The homelessness sector says we need it. The government’s own infrastructure adviser says we need it. So why are we not getting on with it?” Di Natale said.

The Community Housing Industry Association Victoria wants the government to set targets for social and affordable homes in its new activity centres.

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