The marketisation of social housing in New South Wales

摘要: In 2016, the state government of New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, released the Future Directions for Social Housing inNSW policy document—the strategic policy framework for funding and managing social housing. The policy announced the social housing sector would be transformed from ‘one which is dominated by public sector ownership, control and financing’to one that includes ‘greater involvement of private and non-government partners in financing, owning and managing’social and affordable housing assets (FACS 2016: 5). While framed as addressing decades of underfunding in social housing in New South Wales and as a means to increase housing supply through partnership with the private and not-for-profit sector, the policy has been criticised as an extension of a neoliberal policy framework that continues the state’s long-term retreat from direct social housing provision (Morris 2017b). For Morris (2017a: 461), social housing is identified by government ‘as a public asset and ongoing expense that should be privatised if at all possible or alternatively handed over to community housing’.