Category Archives: Housing

This is a monthly digest of interesting articles, research reports, policy announcements and other material relevant to housing stress/affordability and homelessness – with hypertext links to the relevant source.

Although just paying the rent is enough of a challenge for most low-income households – as Anglicare’s latest Rental Affordability Snapshot demonstrates – their housing affordability challenge is further impacted by the cost of energy and transport. For them, it … Continue reading →

Anglicare’s just released 10thRental Affordability Snapshot provides sobering evidence of just how hard it is for those on lower incomes, including those on the most generous government benefits (the Age Pension), to be able to afford to rent a property, … Continue reading →

Land development rights are in reality a public asset and should be capable of being exploited only where accompanied by a fair value commitment to improvement of the public realm, including for example through the delivery of more social or … Continue reading →

This is a monthly digest of interesting articles, research reports, policy announcements and other material relevant to housing stress/affordability and homelessness – with hypertext links to the relevant source.  

There is a plethora of well-intentioned research and opinion aimed at solving Australia’s growing housing crisis, including Labor’s proposed reforms to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount. However, to be really effective, all of this must be considered … Continue reading →

Sydney’s incidence of rough sleeping, just the extreme manifestation of the broader problem of homelessness, remains on the increase and has been so for a number of years. Set against the backdrop of a booming NSW economy, ironically riding the … Continue reading →

This is the second monthly digest of interesting articles, research reports, policy announcements and other material relevant to housing stress/affordability and homelessness – with hypertext links to the source.

This is the first of what is intended to be a monthly digest of interesting articles, research reports, policy announcements and other material relevant to housing stress/affordability and homelessness – with hypertext links to the source material. While the focus … Continue reading →

With his weekend announcement of a $6.6 billion affordable rental construction program, Bill Shorten has dramatically reinforced Labor’s emphasis on housing as central to the Party’s 2019 election policy pitch. The initiative, Labor’s first significant housing investment pledge in four … Continue reading →

Experts have rubbished Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s claims that a proposed rollback of negative gearing will decimate the property market and send rents soaring. This article was published by The New Daily on the 8th of November 2018. 

Remember when Australia was a nation of makers?  As in: the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Snowy Mountains Scheme, Holdens and the Opera House?  Imagine the productivity increase if Australia had a mobile army who would deploy across the country to … Continue reading →

The growing number of people sleeping rough on the streets of our cities has alerted many Australians to the fact that Australia is no longer the egalitarian society we once were, and that, as in other western democracies, inequality is … Continue reading →

The Productivity Commission – the Australian government’s highly influential economic advisory body – released a report titled Rising Inequality? last week. The question mark indicates its scepticism about other research findings on rising inequality in Australia. The commission responded to … Continue reading →

House prices may have finally peaked, at least in Melbourne and Sydney. But a slight cooling in some overheated cities makes little difference to overall housing affordability in Australia, which has declined significantly over the past two decades.We need a new, nationally … Continue reading →

The housing affordability crisis in Sydney and Melbourne is close to the worst in the developed world. As of 2017, the ratio of median house prices to median household income in Sydney was 12.9 and in Melbourne 9.9. Only Vancouver … Continue reading →

Increasing numbers of city dwellers live in apartments. This is particularly the case for migrants. And that makes apartment buildings important hubs of multiculturalism in our cities.

Governments at both federal and state levels continue to rely on the supply of bricks and mortar to solve Australia’s housing issues. We should be focusing not only on how many buildings are supplied, but what those buildings contain – … Continue reading →

2017 was hoped to have been the year of the renter.  As Federal Budget 2018 ticks by, the picture remains grim for low-income renters, despite property prices having come off the boil (for now) in some capital cities.  

This year’s Federal Budget delivered no vision, plan or commitment for addressing the growing housing affordability crisis, yet again failing to recognise how fundamental it is to our nation’s wellbeing to prioritise solving this problem.

No joy from Budget 2018.  Governments do have the resources to tackle affordable housing shortfalls.  They just don’t have the will to accord it the requisite priority.  In so failing, they ignore not only the deep and lasting social costs … Continue reading →

The housing affordability report card for the last 12 months is a mixed one.  A welcome reduction in price and rental pressures in some capital cities is offset by rising homelessness and ongoing housing stress for those on lower incomes, … Continue reading →

Governments at both Federal and State level are still avoiding the politically difficult changes that would make a real difference to housing affordability. But we won’t make progress unless our leaders eschew the popular but ineffective options in favour of … Continue reading →

Budget 2018 fails the 1.5 million Australian households living in unaffordable rental housing or officially homeless, despite the urgent need for Commonwealth leadership on affordable housing policy.

Pearls and Irritations continues to publish various blogs on housing affordability, recognising that the cost of and accessibility to appropriate housing remains out of reach for a significant part of the Australian population.

Property prices have moderated in our largest cities over the past year, thanks in part to tightening of lending by APRA, and on inflows of foreign capital.  There is some respite for first-time buyers, but the picture for renters is … Continue reading →