Alan Kohler’s Quarterly Essay lays out how the policies of successive governments have not only failed to address housing problems, but actively created them.
- Associate professor in urbanism, University of Sydney
Apartments house one in ten Australians, including a higher share of low-income households than other housing types. A new study identifies why some high-density neighbourhoods work better than others.
Australia needs to build 730,000 more social housing units in 20 years.
Housing markets never have met the lowest-income households’ needs. Now is the time to tackle problems that have been years in the making by creating a better system to supply their housing.
Labor has made a substantial commitment to tackling inequality in Australia, but has taken a second-best approach to overcoming the huge shortfall of social housing.
A tenfold increase in building is needed to overcome the current social housing shortfall and cover projected growth in need. But it can be done, and direct public investment is the cheapest way.
Short-term letting via digital platforms benefits some in the market at the expense of others. Closer regulation might be needed in Melbourne and Sydney, where a permissive approach prevails.
One problem with Airbnb is that it isn’t transparent about how many properties are truly ‘shared’ and how many are just part of a letting business. Regulators need to know that to manage the impacts.
Based on research comparing projects across the country, a new assessment tool calculates cost-effective ways to fund affordable housing to meet specified needs in different markets.
For the first time in Australia, more higher-density housing than detached housing was being built last year. Compact cities have pros and cons, but the downsides fall more heavily on the poor.
In the push for more compact cities, don’t forget the ways apartment living is different. And often the downsides of these differences weigh heavily on low-income and disadvantaged households.
Almost nowhere in our capital cities can low-income households – and those on average incomes in Sydney – afford the median rent. Mapping rental vulnerability finds it in regional areas too.
The community needs affordable housing and that requires meaningful targets for new developments. The only ones who will lose out are landholders who make windfall profits from rezoning.
New research released today shows that changes to NSW strata law that allow the sale of apartments against the owner’s wishes likely won’t improve housing affordability or availability.
On Sunday 5 June 2011, 8000 people reportedly turned up to demonstrate support for the Government’s proposed carbon tax. By Sydney standards this amounts to a large public display of support for Government…
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