Any significant decline in home ownership or equity in a home impacts higher care needs: older people will not have an asset to sell to fund the bonds required to enter aged care accommodation.
Barnaby Joyce and Scott Morrison have channelled 1940s-era debates in their comments on housing affordability.
AAP/Sam Mooy
It’s not the first time Australia has grappled with concerns about affordable housing. History offers insights that can help inform contemporary debates and policies.
A blockchain’s ability to move assets from one owner to another allows less dependence on intermediaries.
www.shutterstock.com
There are many hidden costs and inefficiencies in housing markets. Blockchain is poised to transform that.
Treasurer Scott Morrison is eyeing bond aggregation as a way to finance social housing, but government funding is still needed under that model.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
In the second part of our review of what The Conversation experts have to say about housing, we focus on affordability, social housing and what government can do about a growing crisis.
Data from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) reveals the average balance on housing loans has barely trended upwards over the last five years.
Tracey Nearmy/AAP
The government’s unwillingness to consider changing the tax system to fix housing affordability, makes it more likely that APRA may have to become even more prescriptive with its lending criteria.
People with intellectual disability face so many barriers to finding a home of their own that it’s hard to pick one.
shutterstock
Think it’s hard for first-home buyers? Ask people with an intellectual disability about it.
Co-working can be a refreshing change for many employees where the design of the workplace and the politics of their organisation means they are simply too tired.
www.shutterstock.com
We now value the house as a wealth builder, not just a place to live in and raise a family. The result is a distorted investment market that makes home ownership and rental unaffordable.
Jonathan Bredin, a co-author of this article, at work.
Photo: Nathan Oxley
New rules offer the possibility of an inclusive Australian society that enables people with the highest disability-related support needs to have equal access to mainstream services including housing.
Hyun Bang Shin, London School of Economics and Political Science
In a nation where urban living is the ultimate attainment, some households are bracing against the surging tide of development.
To meet the needs of lower-income households, housing should be both affordable and located near public transport and other services.
Graeme Bartlett/Wikimedia
Victoria has been lagging behind other states in developing an affordable housing strategy. Now that one has been released, how well does it meet the needs of households on lower incomes?
Scott Morrison has recently broadened the range of affordable housing policy options he’s considering, and moving beyond simplistic supply-side solutions would be a positive development.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
The housing supply solution our leaders are advocating will only work if affordability is simply a problem of supply. In fact, Australia is almost a world leader in rates of new housing production.
Our big cities increase incomes faster than population growth, but most residents miss out on the extra income growth. Creating multiple centres of activity may help make bigger better for everyone.
Any attempt to improve security for tenants should not deprive them, or their landlords, of the flexibility that many also want.
David Crosling/AAP
Any attempt to improve security for tenants should not deprive them, or their landlords, of the flexibility that many also want. The key problem is landlords’ ability to give notice without a reason.
The homeless people evicted from Flinders Street in Melbourne’s CBD are only the tip of the iceberg of the housing crisis in Victoria.
Joe Castro/AAP
Weak state policies, which lack clear targets and mechanisms for providing more and better affordable housing, are part of the problem. Victoria still doesn’t have an affordable housing strategy.
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