SOCIAL HOUSING KEY TO RECOVERY

For more than two months, Labor has called on the Morrison Government to fund the construction of more social housing and repair existing social housing to save the jobs of thousands of tradies in the housing construction industry.
 
A new report out today backs this call and says it should be a top priority for the Morrison Government.
 

 
It says that funding the construction of more social housing will help get Australians back to work and speed up economic recovery.
 
The Federal Government should announce extra economic stimulus – including spending on social housing and shovel-ready maintenance and infrastructure projects – in or before the October Budget, with the goal of getting hundreds of thousands of Australians back to work and dragging unemployment back down to about 5 per cent by the middle of 2022.
 
This is what Labor did in the GFC.

Labor’s Social Housing Initiative (SHI) invested $5.638 billion in the construction of nearly 20,000 new social housing dwellings and the renovation of a further 80,000 existing properties.

According to KPMG, the SHI provided around 9,000 full-time jobs in the construction industry and for every $1.00 of construction activity, around $1.30 in total turnover was generated in the economy.
 
The Grattan Institute is not the only one calling on the Government to do this. Others include:

The Government needs to get it head out of the sand and start pouring cement.
 
Building more social housing is a win-win.
 
It will put a roof over the head of people who need one and it was save the jobs of thousands of tradies and small businesses.