Does Australia need to do more to address public housing issues?

[danieldemol]

• 'After waiting more than 20 years for public housing, Mich Gray found her new home in a state she describes as "putrid" and "unliveable"
• The NSW Land and Housing Corporation agreed to fix mouldy, rotting floorboards, but a bathroom drain remains disconnected from sewerage
• The corporation said it's working with Ms Gray to address the matters raised

...The CEO of the Tennant Union of NSW, Leo Patterson-Ross, said there were many people like Mich Gray living in awful conditions that need to be fixed.

He said the problem was tenants had to really fight to get things done and the importance of public housing was understated.'

Source: New social housing tenant says house riddled with mould, plumbing not connected

Wow 20 years on a waiting list? I hope Ms Gray had shelter somewhere, I dont know how she would survive 20 years on the streets.

And not even having plumbing connected to the shower drain?

Come on Australia, surely we can do better than this.

In my opinion.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

You hear about the same thing happening across america, especially in both the west and east coast urban centers. Judging by your post, I wonder if Australia has more latitude in regard to building codes. Which obviously can't always be good, for both obvious reasons, and for the technical reasons you describe. However, the american homeless are often forced out of what alternative living situations they might get, i.e. tiny homes, car homes, and camps, merely for not meeting regulatory requirements to hook up to the grid.

Cutting to the bigger point, I think the homelessness thing is then, a general western civilization problem. Our civilization came up with this concept of 'the streets.' We have it over here too, this idea of living on 'the streets.' The problem is, we made 'space' into property, (ever since roman times) and refused to admit that both space and property are finite. And then we regulated how you must live on 'your' property, despite our leveraging of individuality and wealth as the means to secure property, or space