Joal’s landlord is leaving her old home empty. She can’t understand why

The Victorian government is leaving thousands of public housing dwellings empty in the midst of the housing crisis, FOI documents reveal, prompting anger and confusion from public housing residents and their advocates.

The documents, obtained by housing activist Jordan van den Lamb, show that about 2600 public housing properties were empty at the start of the year. Recent Productivity Commission figures show there were 63,762 tenantable public housing properties in Victoria; the empty properties in the documents represent about 4.1 per cent of this stock.

As of March this year, 58,459 households were on the public and community housing waiting list. The empty homes, some of which had been empty for more than a year, would house about 4.5 per cent of those on the waiting list.

Van den Lamb said the urgency of the housing crisis meant the state government should do what it could to utilise any empty public properties, even if it were a small dent in the waiting list.

“I think it’d solve a problem for 2000 households,” he said. “If we can help [thousands of] people, it’s better than helping no people. There’s more that has to be done, but what little they could do they’re not doing.”

Victorian Public Tenants Association chief executive Katelyn Butterss said her staff regularly had to tell vulnerable people they could do little to help them access public housing; she wanted to see more done to utilise empty homes.

Jordan van den Lamb requested the FOI documents earlier this year. Credit: Wayne Taylor

“I have to watch them explain to people that there are no homes available for them … I really think every house at the government’s disposal should be becoming a home for someone who needs it,” Butterss said. “When the need is so great, it’s very difficult to hear about thousands of properties that are uninhabited when with a bit of additional effort they could be.”

The state government in May said that less than 1.8 per cent of public housing properties were empty and ready to be re-let. It has since clarified to The Age that 1.7 per cent of public housing properties were in the re-letting pipeline, and 2.4 per cent were subject to re-letting restrictions. The two figures combined would be 4.1 per cent of public housing stock.

One property in Richmond had been empty for 873 days, or nearly 2½ years. Another in the same suburb was empty for 395 days and was in the re-letting process. “It’s not like we have a small number of people looking for those homes,” van den Lamb said. “Something shouldn’t be in a re-letting pipeline for hundreds of days when we have a waitlist.”

Several properties were empty for a year or longer, and many for hundreds of days. Thousands of properties were listed in the document as vacant for zero “KPI days”, due to re-letting restrictions imposed. It was not clear how long those homes had been without residents.

The re-letting restrictions can include needing extensive renovations, being near the end of their useful life, plans to redevelop or a tenant’s belongings being left behind. The Productivity Commission figures show there were 225 properties that were uninhabitable or undergoing major redevelopments.

The state government did not directly respond to questions about whether it was appropriate to leave public housing empty in the midst of a housing crisis. A Homes Victoria spokesperson instead said: “Our landmark $6.3 billion investment is delivering more than 13,300 new homes across Victoria, with more than 9600 underway or complete.

“We work to ensure all vacant properties are tenanted as soon as possible – the total number of vacant properties has reduced by 30 per cent from 30 June 2023 to 31 July this year.”

Public housing resident Joal Presincula recently moved out of a Williamstown unit because it needed renovations. She said she didn’t think her old home was safe to live in, but was disappointed that public housing had been left to deteriorate and then left empty once it became uninhabitable.

Joal Presincula lives in public housing, and is concerned about the number of homes left empty by the state government. Credit: Jason South

“How does it make me feel? I guess the word I would use is confused as to why the situation has been as bad as it has,” she said. “Why is housing allowed to get as bad as it does until … the most vulnerable people in our community aren’t being taken care of by the people in charge?”

Inner Melbourne Community Legal managing lawyer Louisa Bassini said it was frustrating to hear that thousands of dwellings, many of them in inner-city suburbs, were being left empty. The legal centre has been offering legal assistance to public housing tenants displaced by a state government project to renew the public housing towers and are struggling to find public housing close to their existing communities.

“It’s definitely a source of frustration that they can’t get any assurance from the government that they can remain in public housing in the immediate areas,” she said. “If people were to know the extent of the stock out there that’s left to ruin, they’d be quite angry.”

Bassini said clients who said they wanted to stay in their communities and public housing were told they would have better luck with community housing – which would likely cost more – or would be moved further out of the city.

“It comes across as a false scarcity thing. The idea that there’s a shortage of public housing in the inner city is being used to strong-arm people into community housing,” she said.

Inner Melbourne Community Legal is running a class action challenging the state government’s plan to demolish the inner-city public housing towers on behalf of the residents.

Opposition housing spokesman Richard Riordan said the amount of public housing accommodation had gone backwards under the Labor government.

“We have a public housing list of 60,000 families … over [this] period we’ve gone back 2733 bedrooms,” he said. “They are just replacing existing homes, they are not adding to the stock. As we speak today, there are 2733 fewer places for people to sleep.”

Presincula, who has endured homelessness, said she wanted the state government to give others the opportunity to benefit from cheap, safe and secure housing.

“I would really love to see more investment in public housing specifically. It saved my life and that’s not a joke,” she said. “The stats say the people who experience homelessness have a higher mortality rate than the general public. People who have experienced that trauma die quicker.”