This report is infuriating. Of Plibersek
She remained “confident” the government could still achieve Mr Rudd’s bold aim of halving homelessness by 2020.
It is a sorry state that we look to the Government to solve homelessness – something that is caused by Government action to discourage employment through restrictive labour market regulations.
And how is the aim (of reducing homelessness by 50 per cent by 2020) to be achieved? By public housing.
This reminds me of Rand’s The Fountainhead which has some relevant passages [from Roark]:
I don’t believe in government housing. I don’t want to hear anything about its noble purposes. I don’t think they’re noble.
I think it’s a worthy undertaking – to provide a decent apartment for a man who earns fifteen dollars a week. But not at the expense of other men. Not if it raises taxes, raises all the other rents and makes the man who earns forty live in a rat hole. That’s what’s happening in New York. Nobody can afford a modern apartment – except the very rich and the paupers. Have you seen the converted brownstones in which the average self-supporting couple has to live? Have you seen their closet kitchens and their plumbing? They’re forced to live like that – because they’re not incompetent enough. They make forty dollars a week and wouldn’t be allowed into a housing project. But they’re the ones who provide the money for the damn project. They pay the taxes. And the taxes raise their own rent. And they have to move from a converted brownstone into an unconverted one and from that into a railroad flat. I’d have no desire to penalize a man because he’s worth only fifteen dollars a week. But I’ll be damned if I can see why a man worth forty must be penalized – and penalized in favor of the one who’s less competent.
… Still architects are all for government housing. And have you ever seen an architect who wasn’t screaming for planned cities? I’d like to ask him what right has he to impose it on the others? And if it isn’t, what a council, a conference, co-operation and collaboration. And the result will be ‘The March of the Centuries.’ Peter, every single one of you on that committee has done better work alone than the eight of you produced collectively. Ask yourself why, sometime.
As I’ve long argued, we should be entirely rid of public housing. I don’t mind (so much) providing rent subsidies. But public housing leads to long-term welfare dependency, it strips society of potential workers, it is a hotbed of criminal activity and they cost the taxpayer a fortune. They do not reduce homelessness – merely favour some over others. And those lucky enough to obtain public housing – they enjoy benefits denied most others yet (paradoxical) they have traded off their long-term standards of living for short-term benefits. Because of the welfare trap of public housing, tenants remain disassociated from the labour market (often receiving other benefits such as the disability support pension) and so their life time earnings are lower than if they had eschewed public housing and found a job.
And the Government pumping money into public housing has driven up construction costs and therefore made housing more expensive for taxpayers.
That is a crime. Public housing is unethical.
