WEDNESDAY, 29 APRIL, 2026
Ending the shame By Cade Lucas When asked about how important public housing has been to her, Williamstown woman Joal Presincula doesn’t mince words. “I would say that public housing saved my life,” Ms Presincula said. “Without public housing I wouldn’t have a stable home and therefore a foundation to start my life.” Ms Presincula grew up in public housing in the western suburbs and after spending part of her teenage years living on the streets, returned in her early twenties. She’s spent the past 15 years living in public housing estates in Williamstown where she’s raised two teenage children and retrained as a social worker who now helps others access the sort of crisis accommodation she once needed It’s a success story mirrored by scores of current and former public housing tenants across the country, including its most powerful person no less. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was famously raised in public housing in Sydney’s inner-west by his single mother Maryanne. But while the PM repeatedly refers to these humble origins as part of his political messaging, others with similar backgrounds are often not quite so forthcoming. Despite its many successes, public housing in Australia still carries a stigma that equates it and its tenants with violence, crime, fi lth and various other undesirable traits. It’s a stigma that leads many people to have a dim view of public housing and for those who rely on it to feel ashamed. For many years, Ms Presincula was one of them, but is now lending her voice to a campaign launched by the Victorian Public Tenants Association (VPTA) to end the stigma and discrimination towards people in public housing. “I don’t want to care what people think. I want to break down this stigma,” Ms Presincula said of why she joined the VTPA’s ‘Public and Proud’ campaign which promotes the sector’s many success stories, while calling on the state government to fund a National Public Housing Stigma and Discrimination Reduction Strategy. “On a daily basis public housing renters have to deal with the very real fact that the general perception of public housing is negative,” VPTA chief executive Raoul
Williamstown’s Joal Presincula grew up and still lives in public housing and is lending her voice to a campaign to remove the stigma associated with it. (Damjan Janevski). 548702_03
Wainwright explained of why the strategy was needed. “Th is misconception, or stigma has a negative impact on all areas of their lives.” Ms Presincula knows this better than most, recalling how as a kid she would walk long distances home rather than being dropped at the door, in case someone might see where she lived. Th is continued into adulthood where she would ask to get picked up a few streets away when going out with friends and would prevent her daughters from inviting other children over. “There’s a lot of internalised shame,” Ms Presincula said of being a public housing
tenant, something she attributed to public housing stock being poorly maintained. “Because they’re not maintained very well, you don’t feel house proud enough to tell people where you live and that’s where the stigma comes,” she said, adding that an improved maintenance could be part of the stigma reduction strategy, alongside better public housing allocations to improve safety and greater promotion of its positives and benefits. On that front, the VTPA could hardly ask for a better success story than the current PM, who is profi led alongside other famous former public housing tenants in its ‘Public and Proud’ campaign.
A spokesperson for the state government wouldn’t commit to adopting a public housing stigma and discrimination reduction strategy, but said it was working with community housing organisations, councils, media and community groups to improve the perception of social housing as a whole. “Everyone living in social housing deserves respect, safety and understanding, and we all play a role in challenging negative stereotypes that fuel discrimination,” the spokesperson said. The VTPA’s ‘Public and Proud’ campaign can be found via: ‘https://vpta.org.au/ publicandproud26/
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