Data suggests few tenants return to Victoria's redeveloped social housing estates

Australia Broadcast Center

18-05-2025

Jeannie Erceg spent a decade on the public housing waitlist before being handed the keys to a three-bedroom flat in Melbourne's inner south.
Her 24-year tenancy in the low-rise housing complex, surrounded by homely possessions and the coming and going of her seven children, would come to seem like a lifetime compared to the upheaval that took place next.
Ms Erceg had to relocate so the complex could be knocked down and rebuilt. She had lived at an estate in Port Melbourne for just two years when she learned that it too would face the same fate.
By early 2027, she will have moved three times in a decade.
"It was devastating because I have a daughter with special needs, and it's very difficult to get her to move," she said of the most recent move.
"It was very difficult to think we had to go through the process again."
The wrecking ball was destined for Ms Erceg's Prahran complex and about eight others under a now-superseded project called the Public Housing Renewal Project (PHRP).
Tenants signed legally binding deeds guaranteeing they could return to the estates afterwards, which were generally redeveloped into a higher density mix of private and social homes.
This right has since become a key feature of the state government's largest-ever renewal project: the redevelopment of Melbourne's 44 public housing high-rises over the next 25 years.
Despite this, new data suggests few tenants returned to several earlier renewals.
The return rate at Ms Erceg's block was 21 per cent, or 17 eligible households, according to data provided by the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing.
Across three other PHRP sites — in Hawthorn, Ascot Vale and Heidelberg West — only 13.5 per cent of eligible households took up the offer to return.
The department aims to move tenants into their preferred neighbourhoods, and the low return rate could indicate tenants are happy with its work.
More simply, tenants may also decline to move a second time.
Thousands of households across the nine PHRP sites had also requested transfers by the time the program was announced, according to a parliamentary inquiry into the program.
The terms 'public housing' and 'community housing' seem often to be used interchangeably.
The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute says they are both forms of social housing but with distinct definitions.
Public housing is owned an managed by the state government, whereas community housing is managed, and often owned, by not-for-profit organisations.
Other reasons tenants may decide not to return are complex and varied, but housing advocates say low return rates also raise questions about outcomes for pre-existing communities.
In Heidelberg West, for example, a community of Somali Australians once lived in blocks that were inappropriate for larger families.
"One of the things we saw before the redevelopment — and still see to this day — is families living four, five, six, seven, eight people to a two-bedroom unit," said West Heidelberg Community Legal's Stephanie Price, who worked with the community ahead of the demolition.
"What they hoped for from the redeveloped estate could be more public housing and bigger public housing that could accommodate the sorts of families that could live here prior to the redevelopment."
But Ms Price said no four-bedroom homes were rebuilt at the estate.
While a 10 per cent increase in the number of social housing units was promised across each site, Ms Price said one-bedroom homes dominated — a response to an increase in single-person households on the waitlist.
"While overall there has been a very modest increase in housing numbers on the estate, the overall bedroom capacity has not increased at all," Ms Price said.
"As far as we're aware, there's very little housing that's appropriate for families."
The lawyer said she only knew of one tenant who returned, suggesting the rate varies across projects.
She said it was also unclear if tenants could return to additional protections — like longer leases — offered in public housing, even though a non-government community housing organisation would manage their tenancies.
The question of tenants' rights has received renewed attention as the government embarks on the relocation of thousands of tenants living in the high-rise towers facing demolition.
With relocations in at least two sites underway, the Victorian Public Tenants Association raised concerns that tenants were being moved without legally binding deeds guaranteeing their right to return.
"At the moment they have the Homes Victoria policy document, but these documents can be changed by governments in the future," the VPTA's Katelyn Butterss said.
"They don't have anything that is legally binding. They are relying on a future government keeping the word of the current government."
A Homes Victoria spokesperson said all relocated renters were protected by policy settings providing a right to return, but the agency's website suggests that depends on the suitability of the rebuilt homes.
Relocated tower tenants will pay public housing rents — which are typically slightly lower than community housing — for the duration of the move.
The VPTA called on the government to ensure its rebuilds catered to the needs of relocating tenants.
In Ms Erceg's case, the mother-of-seven decided not to return to the Prahran estate because she felt at home in the Port Melbourne complex she'd been moved to.
It wasn't long before the relocation team came knocking once again, telling her the estate known as Barak Beacon would also go.
"I said 'I've only just moved here. Didn't you know this when you moved me here?'," she said.
Before that estate was razed, material distributed to tenants suggested it would be replaced with modern low-rise homes.
The plans then changed.
When Ms Erceg returns in about a year-and-a-half, after spending the intervening years in a private rental subsidised by Homes Victoria, two towers of up to nine and 11 storeys will make up some of the 408 new dwellings proposed.
Ms Erceg looks ahead to the new housing with some hesitation.
"I think it's important," she said.
"If you're a family and you're used to a yard and having something that you've called your own space, to go somewhere that is a bit of a dog box with no front yard, it's different."