Articles: Social Inclusion

Turning public housing area teams effectively into ‘community housing’ organisations. The problem: State wide centralised departments are no longer the right type of organizations to be managing social housing estates. The State housing authorities were established in the 1940s as public works organizations designed to build tracts of housing for sale or rent to households in employment. Now they administer welfare housing increasingly rented to only those most in need (many of whom are single member households), during the time they are in need.

Reforming the tools used to manage the development of new urban areas. The basic tools used by government to manage the development of new urban areas have lead to unsustainable suburbs, a number of which have problems of social exclusion. The reasons are many.

Encouraging local government to change to outcome focused organisations. I have followed from afar the efforts of the Blair Government in tackling social exclusion. I suspect the Blair approach has been excessively top-down. It has relied too much on high-level co-ordination and special programs, rather than attempting to fundamentally change existing organisations that are partially to blame for the problems but, could be very much part of the solutions.