Infill development is patchy across Australian cities, as is its quality. Bigger and better projects are needed to hit planning targets and reduce urban sprawl.
The number of active short-term rental listings is a small fraction of the total number of dwellings in Australia – and many listings are not in the city areas of great housing need.
The government has made housing a federal policy priority after a decade of neglect. But the scale of the housing crisis means its actions to date are just a start – much more must be done.
Other states may well follow Victoria’s lead, but the 7.5% levy is likely to have a very modest impact on rental housing supply. There’s much more governments could do.
Bypassing planning regulations is likely to have impacts on social inequity and wellbeing that could prove very costly for both governments and people.
COVID-19 halted immigration and housing affordability got much worse. We’d feel the impacts of internal migration and undersupply of affordable housing even if we again blocked migrants from overseas.
We can construct buildings that reduce atmospheric CO₂ by more than their lifetime emissions. They now don’t cost much more – and a project involving 1.2 million homes would drive costs down further.
YIMBYs and NIMBYs agree on one thing – they both want to live in desirable heritage neighbourhoods. And despite heritage being blamed for lack of new housing in these areas, it’s not the real issue.
Without innovation in all five building phases, the industry won’t have the capacity to meet market demands or to deliver the social and affordable housing the government is promising.
The strategy’s core mission should be to ensure everyone in Australia has adequate housing. That requires 950,000 social and affordable rental dwellings to be built by 2041, dwarfing current targets.
The proportion of housing that’s unoccupied has actually fallen since the last census, but the key issue is most of these dwellings are not in the areas where the need for housing is greatest.
More housing supply doesn’t mean lower prices. If policy-makers want to make homes more affordable, they must tackle developers who drive up prices and consider taxing capital gains on homes.
California and other states plan to build more homes in an effort to fix America’s affordable housing problem. But that’s not the main reason housing remains unaffordable for millions of people.
Professor; School of Economics, Finance and Property, and Director, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Curtin Research Centre, Curtin University