Environmentalists and climate hawks are cheering, but many experts aren’t excited about the state making rooftop solar panels mandatory on most new homes beginning in 2020.
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.
State and local governments should change planning rules to allow more medium-density housing.
AAP
Zoning restrictions added A$489,000 to the price of a detached house in Sydney, A$324,000 in Melbourne, A$159,000 in Brisbane, and A$206,000 in Perth.
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.
New affordable housing development in Melbourne.
Ryan van den Nouwelant
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.
Nurses who care for people in the city can’t afford a property anywhere near their place of work.
didesign021/Shutterstock
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.
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.
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.
Why has B.C. become home to Canada’s most vibrant news ecosystem? Credit the wellspring of creativity here — the province’s beauty and potential has long attracted change-makers.
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A good news story about the news? It’s true. In British Columbia, a digital news ecology is flowering through ‘coopetition’ – as Media Democracy Day will soon showcase.
The ageing population is one factor in increasing numbers of people living alone, and innovative and inclusive responses are needed.
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Living and dying alone presents many challenges for cities, and we’ll need more than technology to meet these. Only an inclusive, innovative response can deliver the essential element of human care.
Older women valued a secure private space of their own with, ideally, a small garden.
Jacob Lund/shutterstock
Finding secure affordable housing is a problem for older women across Australia. But new research finds women in regional areas have different priorities from those in the cities.
In Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney, just over a third of dwellings are within 400 metres of a public transport stop with services every 30 minutes, but the proportions are much lower in other cities.
Angela Brkic/AAP
Governments, developers and urban planners all aspire to create liveable cities. Yet when it comes to Australian cities, the rhetoric and reality don’t quite match.
Vital Signs takes stock of all the key elements of a city’s successes and challenges, and the Melbourne Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation uses this data to guide its grant-making.
Lord Mayor's Charitable Foundation
A decade after Toronto produced the first Vitals Signs report, community foundations in Melbourne and other cities are using these reports’ up-to-date data to inform their decisions.
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.
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.
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.
‘Build to rent’ means developers build housing with the intent of retaining the building and renting it out to lower-income families.
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A modest rebalancing of federal tax policy toward build-to-rent housing could fill affordable housing funding gaps. Australian funds are already investing in such a scheme in the US.
Much of what is being built is straightforward ‘investor grade product’ – flats built to attract the burgeoning investment market.
Bill Randolph
The inexorable logic of the market will create suburban concentrations of lower-income households on a scale hitherto only experienced in the legacy inner-city high-rise public housing estates.
Professor; School of Economics, Finance and Property, and Director, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Curtin Research Centre, Curtin University