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.
On current trends, renters will eventually outnumber home buyers, representing a fundamental shift in how the economy and wealth generation work.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
Generation Rent may force a complete rethinking of home ownership as a basis of our housing systems. Rather than representing security, these housing markets make us vulnerable.
The opera house is raised on a terraced platform, away from the shore like an island amphitheatre.
Terence Wong from www.shutterstock.com
Construction should have stopped once the roofs were erected. Any citizen could then have walked up to the terraced amphitheatre, sat down and gazed back at the country from this shrine to the nation.
To understand how households cope, we may need to look beneath broad patterns of affordability to the interplay of housing costs with other problems.
IDuke/Wikimedia Commons
Housing affordability is often not the only problem households face. More often the compounding effects of multiple problems leave people unable to cope, which is why one solution won’t work for all.
There has been a continuous wave of planning reform over the last ten years in Australia, and dwelling approvals in some cities are at long-term highs.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
To tout new housing production as the only solution to rising house prices, without examining the question of demand, is an ineffective policy position.
Without substantial financial assistance many NDIS participants would struggle to find affordable housing to move into.
shutterstock
Shared ownership schemes can unlock access to suitable housing, although these are less common in Australia than overseas. And most are not specifically tailored for people with disability.
Poorly resourced small towns like Marysville often struggle to recover from disasters like the Black Saturday bushfires.
Andrew Brownbill/AAP
Rebuilding small communities on the same site in the same way seldom works. It’s not about getting back to where you were, but rather grasping the opportunity to create a more resilient place.
The mining industry is the largest and perhaps most visible contributor to Australia’s army of long-distance commuters.
AAP/Tony McDonough
Regions that offer adquate amenities for residents have the best chance of converting long-distance commuters into the sort of new residents who can sustain regional prosperity.
As well as meeting his UK counterpart, Philip Hammond (flanked by Australian High Commissioner Alexander Downer), Scott Morrison has been talking with UK housing finance experts.
Will Oliver/EPA
Scott Morrison has been exploring a UK model for channelling investment via a specialist financial intermediary into new affordable housing provided by landlords with a social purpose. It makes sense.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has signed off on the Badgerys Creek airport plan. The aim now should be to maximise the benefits of its construction.
AAP
With one of the world’s largest infrastructure pipelines, Australian governments could leverage their procurement spending power to benefit the communities where the work is done.
The housing affordability crisis isn’t limited to the big cities – the Tweed Heads area, for instance, is rated worse than Melbourne in the latest survey.
AAP
Dallas Rogers speaks with Nicole Cook about how union 'green bans' in the 1970s stopped the redevelopment of working-class suburbs in Sydney.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian needs to shed the Treasury view of housing construction as a silver bullet and back former premier Mike Baird’s social and affordable housing program.
Nikki Short/AAP
The new NSW premier is right to identify housing affordability as a priority for the people and economy of Sydney. It’s not just housing supply that’s the problem – action is needed on many fronts.
An innovative water-sensitive project aims to dramatically improve the health of slums and their environment together.
Rebekah Brown, Monash University; Karin Leder, Monash University, dan Tony Wong, Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities
A five-year project announced today will implement an innovative water-sensitive approach tailored to informal settlements. The goal is to revitalise 24 communities in Fiji and Indonesia.
Federal and state agencies are using powerful automated data-matching programs to identify properties that are generating income and might be liable for tax.
from www.shutterstock.com
State revenue offices are using data matching to identify people who earn income from Airbnb, then sending notices that they may be liable for land tax, even though this remains a legal grey area.
Under pressure from media coverage like this, Lord Mayor Robert Doyle wants to ban people from sleeping on Melbourne’s streets.
Herald Sun
Bans are ineffective when used against populations that have nowhere else to go. Importantly, research shows that punitive approaches to the homeless cost more than supported housing strategies.
Choosing Cairns or Townsville as a northern Queensland capital would set off a political storm, as would new regional governments around Australia.
Dan Peled/AAP
Federal politicians and the public like the idea of abolishing the states. But consider the likely result: a more powerful Canberra, with regional governments amounting to glorified shire councils.
How will it fit in? Every new development should consider the existing neighbourhood character.
Tod Jones
The Melbourne suburb of Richmond is prime inner-city real estate, but the community is paying a price for redevelopment that jars with the existing neighbourhood.
The 20-metre-long Paris Navigating Gym is propelled along the Seine by human power.
Carlo Ratti Associati
Carlo Ratti, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Physical exercise was once primarily an open-air activity, until gym training and monitoring took hold. Digital devices and augmented reality now offer the freedom to head out into the city again.
Cyclone Oswald caused flooding that forced the evacuation of more than 100 patients from Bundaberg Hospital to Brisbane in January 2013.
Dave Hunt/AAP
Most of our hospitals were not designed to cope with the health impacts of future extreme weather. And hospital infrastructure has not been adapted to secure health care during such events.