Housing affordability is one of Australia’s great unsolved problems. Some households can make adjustments to cover high housing costs, but the ones deprived of essentials are under real stress.
A decade after the launch of a national campaign against homelessness, the trends are all going the wrong way. A new annual report highlights what’s gone wrong and what must be done.
Hundreds of squatters were living in a vacant police station in São Paulo when fire broke out on May 1, killing up to four people. The residents were part of Brazil’s nationwide homeless movement.
When the city centre was revitalised in the 1990s, homeless people were pushed out. With homelessness rising today, it’s important to recognise the links between urban development and displacement.
The administration’s proposed changes to a decades-old housing program supporting the poorest Americans would jack up rents and deepen poverty in the US.
If local government is to deliver affordable housing, state and federal governments must assist. Even councils as powerful and well resourced as the City of Sydney cannot do it by themselves.
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.
Based on research comparing projects across the country, a new assessment tool calculates cost-effective ways to fund affordable housing to meet specified needs in different markets.
People on moderate incomes, including police and emergency workers, have been forced to seek housing on the city fringes, far from their places of work. But there are ways to reverse this trend.
There is a risk that affordable housing policy may be colonised by for-profit interests if Australia imports the wrong rental housing ideas from overseas.
City residents all around the world are getting together to create housing tailored to their needs and budgets, instead of being developed for maximum profit.
The Australian government has at last taken the lead in affordable housing policy with a package of measures that should attract institutional investors hungry for low-risk returns.
Canada’s National Housing Strategy leaves a large segment of the population that must find a way to afford housing in the private market. More initiatives are needed to help first-time home buyers.
Rising housing costs are hurting low-income Australians the most. The gap in home ownership between rich and poor is widening, house prices are rising fastest at the bottom and rental stress is rising.
The rising number of older Australians is exposing the shortage of housing options and services to meet their needs, putting them at increasing risk of homelessness.
Professor; School of Economics, Finance and Property, and Director, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Curtin Research Centre, Curtin University