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Articles by Libby Porter
The impossibility of “housing rights”
On 4 April 2025, Justice Melinda Richards of the Supreme Court of Victoria handed down her decision to dismiss a class action case brought against Homes Victoria by Inner Melbourne Community Legal on behalf of high-rise public housing tenants of the North Melbourne and Flemington estates.
Dwelling justice: locating settler relations in research and activism on stolen land
Abstract There is a general consensus now in Australia that we are in the grip of a severe housing crisis. The characteristics of spiralling housing costs and deepening precarity are unfolding in a context of the systematic managed decline of public housing as a critical social infrastructure, such that the capacity to make and find ‘home’ is thinning every day.
Vulture landlords and the justice-washing of housing struggle
Change was afoot in St Kilda in the 1970s, as it so often was. After nearly three decades of post-war population growth accompanied by rapid apartment development and subdivision of gold-rush era mansions, upwardly-mobile migrants from the ‘50s and ‘60s began to depart for the newly-built suburbs. In their place, a stream of artists, punks and misfits flooded the area seeking cheap rent in the vacated buildings. In this stream was a combative and creative style of political expression.
Re-scaling social mix: Public housing renewal in Melbourne
ABSTRACT Social mix is a widely used component of urban housing policy in post-welfare states. Problematizing homogenous areas of disadvantage, social mix policies purportedly aspire to increase socioeconomic diversity within defined areas. In Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, a major program of public housing renewal has been underway since the early 2000s, justified by a social mix agenda. This paper investigates the discursive and scalar mechanisms used to justify and advance this policy scheme.
Melbourne tower lockdowns unfairly target already vulnerable public housing residents
This week, the Victorian government unilaterally placed the residents of nine public housing towers in inner Melbourne under “hard lockdown” due to the “explosive potential” of increasing COVID-19 cases. The lockdown requires all residents of these estates to remain inside their homes for at least five days, placing around 3,000 residents under special punitive measures that apply to no one else in Victoria. Residents are “reeling”.
Public land is being sold exactly where thousands on the waiting list need housing
The need for public housing is greater than ever before – Australia has a shortfall of at least 433,000 dwellings. Using public land for public housing is a no-brainer. But, at the time of writing, the Victorian government is preparing to sell over 2,646 hectares of land. Our analysis reveals 24 of these sites are suitable for delivering high-quality, well-located public housing in places where the need is high. This is nothing new.
The Institute of Australian Geographers Conference Inc. 2020
The Institute of Australian Geographers Conference Inc.
Shh! Don't mention the public housing shortage. But no serious action on homelessness can ignore it
Today, October 10, is World Homeless Day. Next week the Council to Homeless Persons will convene the Victorian Homelessness Conference to discuss options for ending homelessness. On the program are presentations and discussions about Aboriginal homelessness, youth homelessness, the links between mental health and homelessness, the NDIS, and a debate about tiny homes. Nowhere is there any mention of, or provision for discussion about, public housing.
Planning, Land and Housing in the Digital Data Revolution/The Politics of Digital Transformations of Housing/Digital Innovations, PropTech and Housing - the View from Melbourne/Digital Housing and Renters: Disrupting the Australian Rental Bond System and
Introduction If planning is an activity that attempts to mediate market effects in land use and resource distribution, then the revolution from digital tech is fundamentally changing the planning landscape. In sectors of core importance for planning, new platforms, smart devices and digital data are now not merely mediating, but governing relationships, capital flows and behaviours (Fields, 2019 Fields, D. (2019). Automated landlord: Digital technologies and post-crisis financial accumulation.
What kind of state values a freeway’s heritage above the heritage of our oldest living culture?
Libby Porter, Amaara Raheem, Blanche Verlie, Bronwyn Lay & Mick Douglas | 29 August 2019 GUEST OBSERVATION The government intends to destroy Djab Wurrung sacred trees and sites to upgrade the Western Highway at the same time as it seeks heritage status for the Eastern Freeway. The Victorian government has announced it is seeking heritage listing for parts of the Eastern Freeway in Melbourne.
What kind of state values a freeway's heritage above the heritage of our oldest living culture?
The Victorian government has announced it is seeking heritage listing for parts of the Eastern Freeway in Melbourne. We heard this news on Wednesday as we sat under a grandfather tree in solidarity with Djab Wurrung people whose cultural heritage is being threatened by the same government. A Major Road Projects Victoria proposal to extend the Western Highway will destroy sacred Djab Wurrung trees and places.
What kind of state values a freeway's heritage above the heritage of our oldest living culture?
The Victorian government has announced it is seeking heritage listing for parts of the Eastern Freeway in Melbourne. We heard this news on Wednesday as we sat under a grandfather tree in solidarity with Djab Wurrung people whose cultural heritage is being threatened by the same government. A Major Road Projects Victoria proposal to extend the Western Highway will destroy sacred Djab Wurrung trees and places.
To the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Commission on Housing, Church and Community Good health and wellbeing of all UK citizens in or out of work must now become a national priority. | Taxpayers Against Poverty
To the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Commission on Housing, Church and Community The good health and wellbeing of all UK citizens in or out of work must now become a national priority. INTRODUCTION The late Professor Peter Ambrose, in Zacchaeus 2000 Trust’s 2005 memorandum to the Prime Minister on unaffordable housing, described how the 1979 government had deregulated lending, abolished rent controls and allowed the free flow of funds in and out of the UK.
Australian transformation a focus for the National Sustainable Development Council
We are still settling Australian cities on unceded Aboriginal lands. With the global agreement on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, development has finally come home to the developed world. Yet in Australia we still often proceed as if development goals are about foreign aid, somehow separate from our own development activities and civic responsibilities.
Business as usual? The Sustainable Development Goals apply to Australian cities too
We are still settling Australian cities on unceded Aboriginal lands. With the global agreement on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, development has finally come home to the developed world. Yet in Australia we still often proceed as if development goals are about foreign aid, somehow separate from our own development activities and civic responsibilities.
Perth's second coast
Understanding and designing with Perth’s ‘second coast’ is key to the city’s future. There’s an allure to Perth’s coastal edge. With some of the country’s best beaches, the city reclines toward the blinding blue-green water and stretches out for more than 150 kilometres along a continuously developed coastline. So intense is Perth’s orientation to the Indian Ocean that most of our drinking water is now drawn from it (and we also use it on the lawn).
How can we meaningfully recognise cities as Indigenous places?
Australian cities are inherently diverse places, but that diversity can lead to conflict between different values about what cities should and can be. Our series, Conflict in the City, brings together urban researchers to examine some of these tensions and consider how cities are governed and for whom. The return of land to Indigenous custodians in Australia over the past 20 years is a dramatic shift in Australian land tenure and management.
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