The policy focus remains on home ownership, but a new survey shows slight improvements in affordability do little to help people on low incomes. Their plight calls for better social housing policy.
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Articles on Affordable housing
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Canadians should invest in affordable housing. It’s a commitment to lifting the most vulnerable members of our society from the ground up — and lifting our entire country up in the process.
With Australian city rents too high for low-income earners, increasing numbers are forced to share houses or rooms or to live in options like ‘beds in sheds’ and other illegal dwellings.
Housing policy is a stark point of difference at this election. While the government took promising steps to set up social housing finance, it has yet to give any sign it will finish what it started.
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.
If we recognised social housing as infrastructure as essential as transport links, schools and hospitals, not properly investing in it could become unthinkable.
Affordability is a problem across Sydney for prospective home buyers. But if they are able to become owners, new research shows affordability becomes much less of a problem over five to ten years.
Tiny houses aren’t for everyone, but most people who live in them are positive about the experience. Yet planning laws still make this way of life harder and less secure than it could be.
It’s now clear that a single American company, Airbnb, has upended local housing markets, pushed rental prices skyward and could be contributing to poverty, especially in cities popular with tourists.
Labor has made a substantial commitment to tackling inequality in Australia, but has taken a second-best approach to overcoming the huge shortfall of social housing.
In his Sunday announcement, Shorten says the ALP’s ten-year plan to build 250,000 houses and units would be Australia’s “biggest ever investment in affordable housing”.
A tenfold increase in building is needed to overcome the current social housing shortfall and cover projected growth in need. But it can be done, and direct public investment is the cheapest way.
Governments should stop offering false hopes and pandering to NIMBY pressures. As well as increased public and private housing supply, growing cities need well-designed higher-density development.
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.
Cities overseas that have been able to overcome the affordable housing challenges facing cities like Melbourne have adopted a coordinated and systemic approach to scaling up solutions that work.
Brasília was designed to be a just and inclusive city, but it still failed. Can Egypt’s new capital avoid the same mistakes?
As Melbourne’s population hits 5 million, it’s a reminder that growing cities must make much better use of vacant and underused land to meet the urgent need for affordable housing.
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.
In Canberra you can build on land you don’t own, and it’s cheaper.
In the 1970s, a young urban planning professor, Dolores Hayden, believed that city design was the key to unlocking patriarchal structures that trapped women in the home. How much has the city changed?
Top contributors
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Professor of Housing Research and Policy, and Associate Director, City Futures Research Centre, UNSW Sydney
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Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Sydney
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Housing Policy Researcher, Expert Advisor, Housing Assessment Resource Tools and Adjunct Professor, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
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Emeritus Professor, University of Sydney
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Adjunct Professor, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University
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ARC Future Fellow & Professor of Economics, Curtin University
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Senior Research Fellow, City Futures Research Centre, UNSW Sydney
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Professor, City Futures Research Centre, Faculty of the Built Environment, UNSW Sydney
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Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Hallmark Research Initiative for Affordable Housing, The University of Melbourne
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Professor of Housing Research, University of Adelaide
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Professor; School of Economics, Finance and Property, and Director, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Curtin Research Centre, Curtin University
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Program Director, Economic Policy, Grattan Institute
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Associate Profesor, School of Planning, University of Waterloo
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Professor of Urban Policy and Director, Urban Futures Enabling Impact Platform, RMIT University
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Alan Morris is a Friend of The Conversation.
Professor, Institute for Public Policy and Governance, University of Technology Sydney
