Concerns about foreign investors driving up housing prices have been growing. Australia was first to bar foreign purchases of existing residential property, but New Zealand is set to go further.
Middle-class homeowners need credits, not deductions.
Konstantin L/Shutterstock.com
Rather than tinkering with the deduction, Republicans should get rid of it altogether and replace it with something that would actually help more Americans afford a home.
The Ballarat Road project in Maidstone and Footscray, Melbourne, will transform vacant land into housing for people at risk of homelessness.
Schored Architects
An innovative collaboration between government, a non-profit group and philanthropists has found a way to provide urgently needed housing on land that would otherwise be left vacant for years.
For many Americans, there is no such thing as affordable housing in today’s real estate market.
Aleutie/Shutterstock.com
Slashing government spending on housing and scrapping a key financing option for new units would make it harder than ever for low-income Americans to keep a roof over their heads.
PAH activists occupy a bank office in Barcelona in July 2013.
Albert Gea/Reuters
We rarely see residents of a city successfully push back in defence of their needs against the power of finance capital, which seeks to make money from the city. But Barcelona shows it can be done.
Without medium-density housing being built in the established suburbs – the ‘missing middle’ – the goals of more compact, sustainable and equitable cities won’t be achieved.
zstock/shutterstock
Residents of established middle suburbs are slowly coming round to the idea, but governments and the property sector lack the capacity to deliver compact cities that are acceptable to the community.
Christo Venter, University of Pretoria and Gary Hayes, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
South Africa needs to review its approach to rolling out Bus Rapid Transit systems as the current model is proving to be too expensive and unsustainable.
Cash-strapped Hartford is one of a number American cities that have missed out on the nation’s urban renaissance.
Jessica Hill/AP Photo
In the country’s wealthiest cities, gentrification is a dirty word. But it’s all relative – just ask Hartford and Columbus.
The Living Space development in Cockburn, Western Australia, has won praise as an innovative mixed-use social housing project.
Courtesy of HHA Projects
City living costs are driving people to organise themselves to share a room with strangers. These precarious living arrangements hardly qualify as a home.
Young Australians still remain locked out of the housing market as the wealth disparity grows across generations.
Australia is becoming wealthier, but much of that wealth remains concentrated in the hands of older generations.
Housing policymaking hasn’t gone smoothly since Tony Abbott sidelined the experts by scrapping the National Housing Supply Council in 2013.
Alan Porritt/AAP
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.
Typical mass housing units in South Africa.
Filckr/IGN11
Durban one of South Africa’s third largest cities, by population has reported that the number of people living in informal dwellings has remained stubbornly high.
A tiny house in the backyard appeals to some as a solution that offers both affordability and sustainability.
Think Out Loud/flick
New research has found a marked increase in people, particularly among women over 50, who are building or want to build a tiny house. However, inflexible planning rules often stand in their way.
The impact of Airbnb varies from city to city and suburb to suburb.
AlesiaKan/shutterstock
About 10% of empty dwellings on census night – 1.2% of all housing – were available for rental and vacancy rates have changed little in 35 years. Could governments be overreacting?
A house and land on the River Derwent, Tasmania, 1822.
National Library of Australia
The egalitarian myth behind the great Australian dream of home ownership is at odds with the first rules of land granting in the colonies. Even then, property ownership depended on wealth and status.
The Grocon-built 77-apartment Greenwich Fairfield development in Melbourne includes ten apartments for people with disability.
Artist's impression, Grocon
The NDIS has the resources and mandate to develop a mature market that delivers suitable housing for people with high disability needs, including the more than 6,200 young people now in aged care.
Professor; School of Economics, Finance and Property, and Director, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Curtin Research Centre, Curtin University
Professor of Social Epidemiology and Director of the Centre of Research Excellence in Healthy Housing at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne