Renting a house shouldn’t mean it’s not home. Until we change our meaning of home by separating it from ownership, we will never be able to “fix” Australia’s housing crisis.
Governments should stop offering false hopes and pandering to NIMBY pressures. As well as increased public and private housing supply, growing cities need well-designed higher-density development.
Most renters are happy with their landlords and happy with the quality of their accommodation, but they would like better security of tenure and cheaper rent.
Shared equity models have a dual benefit of making home ownership affordable for people on modest incomes and freeing up scarce social housing for other households in need.
Proposed changes to NSW rental tenancy law are an improvement, but do not end the excessive rent increases and “no grounds” evictions that put renters – and older women in particular – at risk.
Residential tenancy reforms are before the NSW parliament, but a key reform is missing. In this open letter, housing academics call for an end to landlords’ power to terminate leases with ‘no grounds’.
Until now most people have eventually owned a home. But two trends – falling ownership and a growing aged population – will put the budgets of retirees and government under real pressure.
Much of the innovation in providing social housing is coming from community housing providers around the country. And it’s desperately needed given the state of housing inequality in Australia.
It is thought that it doesn’t help much to cut official interest rates toward or beyond zero, and maybe it doesn’t, but new research suggests the answer has a lot to do with the housing market.
People living with the change and uncertainty of this century need flexible and adaptable housing. Here we look at a couple of examples of what’s possible.
Ilan Wiesel, The University of Melbourne; Liss Ralston, Swinburne University of Technology, and Wendy Stone, Swinburne University of Technology
The Productivity Commission neglected the impact of housing costs. After allowing for these costs, the top 10% of households’ average disposable income grew at 2.7 times the rate of the bottom 10%.
A national survey shows councils know much of the housing in their local areas isn’t affordable. But providing affordable housing is not a priority because they see it as being beyond their means.
Urban policies are based on assumptions of a “normal household” and what buildings for it should look like. So this research project explored how people feel about children in high-density housing.
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