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.
Campaigning for a third term in government in 2014, NZ Nationals leader John Key visits a new housing development, consistent with the government’s framing of affordability as a supply problem.
Sarah Robson/AAP
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.
Most young people who enter aged care do so after acquiring a disability and need high levels of support.
Heiko Kueverling/Shutterstock
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.
The recent slump in building approvals is a reminder of the risks of an over-reliance on a boom-and-bust market to meet all housing needs.
Joel Carrett/AAP
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.
Labor wants housing to be a federal election issue, but to solve the problems of recent decades Australian governments need to comprehensively rethink their approach.
Julian Smith/AAP
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.
You can’t build housing without land, and developers typically control the rate of which it’s released to stop prices falling.
Lukas Coch/AAP
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.
Airbnb’s likely impacts on people and their responses to it are related to their status as property owners, investors, prospective buyers or tenants.
Justin Lane/EPA
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.
The Melbourne Apartments Project developed by the Barnett Foundation offered 28 units to households living within 4km of the site and willing to leave their social housing.
Barnett Foundation
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.
Local councils across Australia are concerned about a shortage of affordable housing, but feel the problem is beyond local government’s capacity to solve.
Dave Hunt/AAP
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.
Thousands marched to demand an end to xenophobic violence in South Africa recently.
EPA/Kim Ludbrook
A survey shows 70% of South Africans feel immigrants pose a threat to the country.
If you want to separate investor demand for property assets from demand for affordable housing, rent is a better indicator than property prices.
James Ross/AAP
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.
Only in the past couple of years has housing construction got close to matching population growth in Sydney and other big cities.
Brendan Esposito/AAP
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.
The rise in new housing in Australia is outpacing population growth.
Brendan Esposito/AAP One
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 argument that stronger supply will deliver more affordable housing isn’t borne out in areas where new unit and apartment construction is booming.
Joel Carrett/AAP
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.
Older and poorer Australians aren’t benefiting from negative gearing.
AAP
New modelling shows negative gearing and capital gains taxes can be reformed in a way that doesn’t impact poorer investors.
In the past, house building matched high immigration. Construction has increased, particularly in Sydney, but needs to make up the backlog of a decade of undersupply.
Dan Himbrechts/AAP
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.
State premiers like Gladys Berejiklian need to have a much sharper policy focus on delivering social and affordable housing.
David Moir/AAP
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.
The Living Space development in Cockburn, Western Australia, has won praise as an innovative mixed-use social housing project.
Courtesy of HHA Projects
Professor; School of Economics, Finance and Property, and Director, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Curtin Research Centre, Curtin University