Housing
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Who owns the development rights in our cities?
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 affordable housing. Part of the value added from increases in the value of development rights Continue reading »
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Monthly digest on housing affordability and homelessness – Mar/Apr 2019
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. Continue reading »
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ADRIAN PISARSKI. Tackling the Housing Crisis Properly Requires a National Housing Strategy
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 in the context of a new national housing strategy. Only by taking that sort of Continue reading »
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KATHERINE McKERNAN. Sydney’s rough sleeping problem – no rest for any of us!
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 stamp duty boom of a rampant property market, it is a sad indictment on the Continue reading »
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Monthly digest on housing affordability and homelessness – Feb/Mar 2019
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. Continue reading »
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Monthly housing digest – Jan/Feb 2019
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 is on Australia, the Digest may occasionally include items of significant interest from overseas jurisdictions. Continue reading »
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Housing affordability and Labor’s tax proposals (Revised)
Home ownership has become much less affordable. It is a major source of inequality both between generations and within generations. Housing cannot become more affordable without bringing down house prices relative to incomes. Labor’s tax proposals are intended to do just this. But is this the right time? House prices are allegedly falling already, and Continue reading »
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IAN McAULEY. The housing bubble, inflated by Howard and Costello, is now deflating.
Housing prices in our most overheated markets, Sydney and Melbourne, are falling. The housing bubble is a consequence of reckless economic policies pursued by the Howard-Costello Government, who, in the name of “financial dynamism”, privileged financial transactions over real economic activity. Continue reading »
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HAL PAWSON. Shorten places housing at the centre of the 2019 election
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 federal elections, aims to help qualifying low-to-moderate income earners increasingly squeezed out of urban housing Continue reading »
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ISABELLE LANE. ‘Misleading and disingenuous’: Treasurer’s negative gearing claims slammed.
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. Continue reading »
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CHRIS MILLS. Mobile Workers Stampede from the City to the Bush.
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 provide skilled workers where, when and for as long is required. Fruit pickers, mobile phone Continue reading »
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BOB DOUGLAS. Homelessness, a sign of increasing Australian Inequality that we must now address.
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 on the rise. Continue reading »
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ILAN WIESEL, LISS RALSTON, WENDY STONE. How the housing boom has driven rising inequality.
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 its own question in the report’s very first heading: “Over nearly three decades, inequality has Continue reading »
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DUNCAN GRAHAM. The Bush Drivers Lament.
Thousands of escapees from chilly southern cities are currently cruising northern Australia in search of warmth, wildflowers, new friends and a little adventure. The grey nomads prefer caravans, some so lavishly equipped they’re really villas on wheels with solar panels, family pets and air conditioning. The young and foreign go for small vans with a Continue reading »
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RICHARD ECCLESTON. The housing divide
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 coordinated approach to housing policy in order to ensure that the vast majority of Australians Continue reading »
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BOB BIRRELL AND EARNEST HEALY. The Housing Affordability Crisis in Sydney and Melbourne
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 and Hong Kong were as bad or worse on this metric. Continue reading »
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CHRISTINA HO, EDGAR LIU, HAZEL EASTHOPE. Higher density and diversity: apartments are Australia at its most multicultural.
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. Continue reading »
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LEO PATTERSON ROSS. Renters still face unacceptably poor conditions.
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 – people, trying to make a home. Continue reading »
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NED CUTCHER. House prices off the boil in some cities, but it’s still grim for renters.
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. Continue reading »
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JACK DE GROOT. A home is much more than a roof over your head
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. Continue reading »
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WENDY HAYHURST. Budget 2018: What happened to affordable housing?
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 of such neglect, but also the strong economic case for addressing housing affordability. Continue reading »
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PETER PHIBBS. Australian housing policy – going around in circles
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, for whom more direct help is needed. Policy debate is often still very confused, even Continue reading »
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JOHN DALEY AND BRENDAN COATES. We can’t begin to fix our housing crisis until our leaders start levelling with the public
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 planning and tax reforms that could actually improve affordability. Continue reading »
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CHRIS MARTIN AND HAL PAWSON. Last year’s affordable housing green shoots have withered
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. Continue reading »
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Update to May 2017 ‘Making Housing Affordable’ series
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. Continue reading »
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SAUL ESLAKE. What has changed in the housing market over the past year?
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 mixed. This year’s Budget had nothing significant for housing and those on lower incomes have Continue reading »
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SUSAN RYAN. The impact of the 2018 Budget on women. It is most notable for its omissions.
The National Foundation for Australian Women (NFAW) each year prepares an analysis of the impacts of the federal budget on women. Since the Coalition government abandoned the practice of including a Women’s Budget Statement in the official Budget documents, a policy-oriented women’s NGO, the NFAW, has prepared this work. This extract gives an overview of the Continue reading »
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NICOLE GURRAN and CATHERINE GILBERT. England expects 40% of new housing developments will be affordable, why can’t Australia?
Australia has record levels of supply of new properties but despite various government interventions, housing still remains unaffordable for many. Continue reading »
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HAROLD LEVIEN. How to Solve our Housing Crisis.
Federal Government policies are primarily responsible for the housing crisis facing Sydney and Melbourne first-home buyers and renters. Yet this Government virtually ignores fist-home buyers. Indeed it pursues policies which drive very many out of the housing market into exorbitant rentals. One policy, annual tax concessions to housing investors, cost $12 billion last year. Continue reading »
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DUNCAN MACLENNAN ET AL. Housing: New Reapolitik Needs a New Real Economics
Managing the pressured housing markets of cities such as Sydney and Melbourne poses a major challenge to governments at both state and Federal levels. As has become increasingly clear, such trajectories are wreaking serious damage for younger aspiring homebuyers and for broad swathes of the lower income population. As yet less well-recognised, however, is the Continue reading »
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