Australia has seriously neglected social housing, a crisis everyone is now paying the price for. Social housing was once seen as an essential part of the welfare state. It has now become a last resort or, often, an impossible dream.
In this episode, we speak with Professor Alan Morris about what we can do to fix the social housing crisis, as well as the decline in homeownership across Australia.
Having stable housing brings a significant cost benefits, ranging from improvements in mental health and reduced hospitalisation time to enhanced growth and development in young children. Professor Morris argues it is a human right, one we have been neglecting.
This is the second podcast in our housing miniseries, following the first episode with Dr Nicholas Frank. Stay tuned for next week!
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Professor Alan Morris is an urban and housing studies scholar. He is a professor at the Institute for Public Policy and Governance at the University of Technology Sydney, and is the author of many books, including The Private Rental Sector in Australia: Living with Uncertainty co-authored with Hal Pawson and Kath Hulse and published in 2021. He currently has Australian Research Council funded projects on eviction and on social housing waiting lists.
Sharon Bessell is a Professor of Public Policy and Director of both the Children’s Policy Centre and the Poverty and Inequality Research Centre at ANU Crawford School of Public Policy.
Arnagretta Hunter is the Human Futures Fellow at ANU College of Health and Medicine, a cardiologist, physician, and a Senior Clinical Lecturer at ANU Medical School.
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