The pledge to build 30,000 homes over the next five years exposes the government’s inaction, but it’s still only a fraction of the number Australians need.
Most local councils, developers and nonprofit providers want mandatory affordable housing requirements applied to all development. The current system of voluntary negotiations just isn’t working well.
Tracing politicians’ use of the term ‘housing crisis’ reveals it came into common use only in recent years, and then only by opposition MPs. Governments prefer to frame the issues differently.
Around 6,000 Australians aged under 65 still live in nursing homes, cut off from their families and peers, with inadequate support for their disabilities.
Housing markets never have met the lowest-income households’ needs. Now is the time to tackle problems that have been years in the making by creating a better system to supply their housing.
The problems with housing systems in Australia and similar countries run deep. Solutions depend on a fundamental rethink of our approach to housing and its central place in our lives and the economy.
The thing about new housing is you need land to build it on. Developers are able to control its release at a rate that doesn’t put downward pressure on prices.
Short-term letting via digital platforms benefits some in the market at the expense of others. Closer regulation might be needed in Melbourne and Sydney, where a permissive approach prevails.
Shared equity models have a dual benefit of making home ownership affordable for people on modest incomes and freeing up scarce social housing for other households in need.
A national survey shows councils know much of the housing in their local areas isn’t affordable. But providing affordable housing is not a priority because they see it as being beyond their means.
Property prices have soared in the past decade, but much more modest increases in rent, with the exception of Sydney, suggest less of an imbalance of supply and demand for housing as a place to live.
Migrants have similar home ownership rates to the overall population and rely less on public housing. But housing supply shortfalls and higher prices have reduced ownership among recent migrants.
It’s said Australia’s housing affordability problem is the result of new housing stock not keeping pace with population growth. But there is actually enough housing, so why can’t the poor afford it?
The clichés about housing supply and regulatory restraints are distractions from the need to focus on expanding the affordable housing sector to directly meet the needs of low-income households.
Australian governments are faced with a choice: make the difficult decisions to fix planning systems so more houses can be built, or tap the brakes on Australia’s migrant intake.
Yet again the evidence shows supply is no cure-all for affordable housing. All levels of government in Australia need to concentrate on housing for low-income renters in particular.
Unaffordable housing and homelessness are burning issues. Policymaking has suffered from a critical lack of data and expert input since the National Housing Supply Council was axed in 2013.
Professor; School of Economics, Finance and Property, and Director, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Curtin Research Centre, Curtin University