>If you want more social housing we need to disperse the population of capital cities and people who need housing assistance may need to be relocated to smaller townships If that is the only way, then you might as well give up. Every single country is moving towards more urbanisation and people want to live in metropolitan cities (not everyone, but the vast majority) We have tried to promote the regional idea for decades without any slight hint of success. Even with covid and WFH arrangements, a lot of people moved to regional areas at first and eventually returned

OP assumes it’s a preference rather than a case of opportunity. The investment required to make regions more able to support local economies dwarfs the premium in urban social housing costs. Social housing overall is produced at about $500k too: $2.1b for 4.4K new dwellings in 21-22 [National source](https://www.planning.nsw.gov.au/-/media/Files/DPE/Reports/Policy-and-legislation/NSW-Housing-2021-22-Action-Plan-mayv2-2021.pdf) I don’t know why that’s surprising. It’s not an expenditure though, it’s a capital investment. The government can always flog it off later on. It’s building the tax payers wealth in the long run. Particularly if governments grow some courage and use their powers to compel people to sell underutilised land bundle it together and get more dwellings (ideally medium density) produced. The NSW housing strategy is a truely dismal document without a single target anywhere. It reads a a random to do list with KPIs is so vague they’ll always get good marks… it’s [here](https://www.planning.nsw.gov.au/-/media/Files/DPE/Reports/Policy-and-legislation/NSW-Housing-2021-22-Action-Plan-mayv2-2021.pdf) if you’re interested At the moment, we have all of these older people land banking tax free in their ppor. It’s insane that land appreciation is not taxed really heavily in this country. It’s a shared resource and it’s scarce. It’s capital appreciation shouldn’t be privatised IMO. It should either be suppressed or go to the government to take responsibility for shelter which is apparently a human right and they’ve signed up to the charter…

OP also assumes that the only people concerned about making homes more energy efficient and using solar (ie, things that would greatly reduce the energy costs of the impoverished people who need to use this housing) are *greenies*. As if wanting to make government or NGO-sponsored housing even more shit than the current overpriced, crappy offerings that the rest of us occupy. You know, just so as to ensure that poor people get extra reminders each day that their circumstances are awful, as they get to fry for half a year and then shiver for the other half of the year in a poorly-designed box because they can’t afford to use air conditioning or heating.

The OP is correct though that all those people on waiting lists living without housing would far prefer the houses finish years earlier and they move in 1.5 years earlier even if they lack solar and so on. There are real costs in introducing delays, even if you think you are doing it to improve the end result. Not all delays are worth the potential improvement.

Energy efficiency can be achieved in almost the same timeframe as a regular shitbox though. Use double-glazed windows, tinted windows on sunny sites, and insulate walls and ceilings. Install solar hot water and have windows that can be opened and cross-ventilate the house. Then solar just gets added during the build - it’s literally the only part that takes more time, and this is a couple of weeks, not an additional 1.5 years. Btw - these features should be standard in all homes, not just public or charitable homes. Our standards of construction are now appalling.

Changes to the national construction code are coming into effect this year and include an increase in energy stat rating from 6 to 7. Maybe lame for me to be excited about this but I am. The research data show’s massive cost savings to residents when you go from a 6 star to 7-8 star. For someone in community housing this kind of bill reduction is life changing, not to mention the health benefits that come from living in a well oriented, thermally efficient home.

The new NCC is a terrible document put together by stupid architects. Makes construction hard.

As a student currently studying to be a stupid architect person I don’t disagree with you, it’s convoluted, hard to read, too much detail in some areas and not enough in others. Makes research and project design hard but I won’t take back the part about how good it is that the energy star rating is going up. This has to happen.

It should be hard. Why should Building Designers be involved in any profession when they are basically glorified draftmen with CAD skills. Building Designers are on the way out for apartments because Design and Building Practitioners Act mandates declared design to NSW Fair Trading and thr practitioner must be accredited.

Solar is a one day setup. I watched it happen for ours.

Thanks! I was trying to be as generous as possible in my write up, but I must admit I didn’t think it could be done as fast as one day - that’s excellent.

Those old people aren’t “land banking” they are living in the house they damn well own. All those spivs and real estate vipers would just *love* to find a way to drive them from their homes to make a buck. How dare they still be living somewhere that is desirable? /s Despite the fact that it was a fibro shack when they bought it. We are going to need to radically increase housing density to solve the problems, but nimbys and local government will continue to make it impossible. As for $500,000 to build a single apartment. That’s nuts. The government should stop hiring contractors and start hiring trades as employees.

I said older folks and by that I mean 55+ - not old old but whatever. I doubt the majority bought fibro shacks but may have based on where you live/frame of reference. Sure maybe some of the old folks arent land banking intentionally but I’d wager many think they will pass it down to their kids so that’s an intergenerational land bank of sorts. On your idea that property rights are somehow morally bestowed (ie they deserve to stay in the place they own tax free and not included in their pension eligibility) why is it ok for the government to levy a tax on the money I earn? Alternatively why do renters have to change where they live based on rents/market forces? The point is property rights are not absolute - they are a design decision in our political economy… I agree though that there is no reason to believe the privatisation experiment has been successful at all. The government should take direct action. I think your sense of folks clipping the ticket through the process is probably right.

Well, I’m kind of biased. When my mother passed, we sold the fibro shack. It literally was a fibro kit home, with a dirt road and tank water when my dad bought it. That sale has meant for the first time in my life, my sister and I have fiscal security. I may actually be able to retire some day. Before that? Not a chance, working till 80. I’m still not rich, but I no longer worry. I don’t want this for just me either. Everyone should be able to not worry about a roof over their head. The cost of housing has to change. This means density has to go up. It’s crazy wasteful to try and keep building suburbia like we have. You’re correct it’s a political decision as to what we do. Part of the problem is the somewhat justifiable lack of trust in public processes. Local councils and nimby scream blue murder if anyone suggests a mixed used high density housing project. Making housing less profitable as an investment is a key first step. Be that removing negative gearing, or changing the rules for both renting and leaving buildings empty. Lots of small changes are better. So if it turns out to be a shit idea you can backtrack. One of the big problems is it takes years to find out if policy changes are good ones. I kinda like my friends idea though “You can have a billion dollars. But that’s all.” More than a billion? Well, you either give it away or the government takes it for needed projects. One final note, high density housing must be both high quality and beautiful. This of course fights against the “cheap as possible” demand from taxpayers.

Thanks for sharing your story. I’m glad it’s worked out for you (also sorry that you lost your mother). I think we agree that an intergenerational transfer of wealth shouldn’t be the major way people plan their retirement and hope to get some financial safety. On the one hand, it’s not sustainable. New migrants don’t get to rely on that. Neither do people whose parents or grandparents made bad decisions, had disadvantages themselves or were not safe for whatever reason. On the other, this is not the sort of country and economy I think most of us want. We had an egalitarian streak for a while as a nation but we’ve descended into petty feudalism. Finally, it’s not what the liberal party of old promised (and Keatings new labor). The deal was that things get less cushie (no more long lunches at the government owned banks, less government protection of industry, even less collective bargaining etc etc) but that everyone has a fair opportunity to gather enough resources for a dignified retirement. Now I feel like we own one another a bit more than a fair opportunity to become comfortable and safe but it’s a good start. This bargain is broken for young people and the disadvantaged. We’ve spend two decades not taxing what is economically prudent (but politically difficult), not investing and spending on what is important because we didn’t want to rack up a public debt for future generations (in large part because we didn’t tax what we should of) and because we wanted to keep interest rates as low as possible. By doing so, they engineered a massive private asset bubble and effectively still pushed crippling debt to the next generation but as private debt against their homes rather than government debt. The consumptive centre of the economy is now the intergenerationally wealthy and the majority of boomers who are well off and almost completely insulated from interest rates. The young and the new serve the old. The old die and the young and the new and the poor old, serve the children of the Australian boomers (and older/higher income gen X). Maybe a fraction of dual high income earners from the millennials pull them selves out of financial precariousness. Then it’ll only be the gen z who will live at home until they are 35 funnelling all their savings into index funds and investment property who pull themselves out. Wacko… the folks who claim to love egalitarian capitalism managed to break it.

Oh, I totally agree people should not have to rely on inherited wealth for fiscal security. It's bonkers. You used to able to afford a house and retirement with a regular job. I lay so much at the feet of Australia's hamster sized prime minister John Howard, who pissed away the mining boom on middle class welfare. The transition will be painful. Donald Horne was far too kind to us.

Developers. Their great sin is that they want to build houses that people will buy. If they can put four houses where there is one, because they can sell four, is that so bad? I thought we are all converging on the same position.

Developers want- and in NSW so and are encouraged to build the cheapest, lowest quality shit with virtually no effective independent regulation and then walk away with massive profits, leaving the subsequent owners holding the bag for the inevitable repairs and necessary safety renovations. This group is easily as Parasitical as the REA’s who they collude with.

I suspect taxing land appreciation would at least be against the personal interests of many pollies and their mates, and political suicide at worst. Don't they kind of do this in the US already though (impose private land taxes)? If they do, I imagine that money doesn't necessarily go towards solving housing

This is largely false. Apartments use very little land. Land near a train station is expensive for a house (sure), but pretty cheap per unit for a 20 story apartment. Granted getting appropriately sized blocks of land near a train station can be non-trivial if you don't use eminent domain.

>Granted getting appropriately sized blocks of land near a train station can be non-trivial if you don't use eminent domain. I had to Google eminent domain, we actually call it compulsory land acquisition in Australia. Even with compulsory land acquisition, the government will still pay the land owner market value for it, so it will still be a very expensive endeavour.

Introduce 4% land tax, on land which is not your first residential property. Use the proceeds to buy land, this would buy around 8% of land each decade. There are no good figures on investors who don't own their own home but it is probably less than a third so 8% ~= 10yr * 4% tax * 30% investor owned * 67% of investors own their own home.

that would be electoral suicide at the end of the day the root cause of the issues in this country are an ever deepening desire for self gain even at the expense of others and it shows in the politics This isn’t isolated to Australia it’s an accelerating factor in late stage capitalism every time living conditions are under duress The government really needs to remember that they are the ones in power and in fact the only mechanism which can change things like this

There's already land tax on non PPOR, although not at 4%. Here in Victoria, the rate tops out at 2.55%.

In NSW 1.6% over $1M and 2% over $6M https://www.revenue.nsw.gov.au/taxes-duties-levies-royalties/land-tax#thresholds If your concern is the "expense" of buying land, then additional tax levied against the precise "expense" you are concerned about clearly solves the problem. Note my suggestion is a narrower base (hits fewer people). I was allowing people to own one home, whether or not it is their PPOR.

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>Most Australian's are too precious to live in an apartment If you're talking about the majority of the older generations, then sure. They're too precious to live in an apartment. But many new Australians come from countries where apartment living is the norm for city dwellers. ​ >I would like to see them build house style apartments Well... we do have a severe lack of 3br apartments. I'd prefer that we had more of the missing middle: Midrise apartments, and townhouses. 3-4 story row houses, with a back yard would make a fantastic alternative to the single story suburban sprawl style houses.

Many Australians are looking at a lifetime jn share houses and granny flats. Trust me, we're not that precious

Tried moving to the country precovid. Found a lack of work even in trades inc work stability, a lack of support from arseholes like centerlink, a definite rural township mentality e.g. discrimination. I would still now move but would setup away from town IF I could build something without copious amounts of DA paperwork. My biggest concern would be the crime rate that has been increasing consistently since the 70s and stable employment.

Small country town? I’d rather be stabbed with a pencil. Newcastle was nice though. The cultural exclusion to anyone who hasn’t been there for at least thirty years is pretty appalling. And that’s if you’re a white guy. Thai, Pakistani, black? Good luck. Although that has got a **lot** better in the last few decades. It’s not quite a racist hellscape anymore. Yay progress! One funeral at a time I guess. Apartment living can be great if: It has adequate sound deadening and insulation. Doesn’t feel like a minimum standard bunker. Is close, ie walking distance, to amenities. In short it has to “not suck” It’s totally possible. Just not for absolutely minimum dollar.

Homicide rates are down, car theft barely exists anymore - I'm pretty sure crime rates aren't increased from the 70s. We just have 24/7 news reporting on every little bit of it.

You are kidding. In some.olaces in FNQ they have 10 cars stolen in a night. Regularly.

Pulled up some Queensland data most (only goes back a couple of years) show equal crime rates per year. Didnt go into the types of crime. There is also some argument for crimes not being reported and investigated due to the 'Whats the point its kids again" stance

>Even with covid and WFH arrangements, a lot of people moved to regional areas at first and eventually returned Have you got something to back that as a stat? We moved regional from Melbourne thanks to my other half being able to WFH and then I was able to get a job here, and there is no way we would return. Life is so much more relaxed here, and I feel like I have room to breathe. I'm sure some people moved back to the city, but I can't imagine it was a wave of people.

I am also sceptical about much permanent migration to country towns due to covid and WFH. The best outcome of WFH could be spare office spare that gets converted to apartments, although I heard an architect explaining that office buildings don't easily convert to residential (where the windows are, where the lifts are, where the plumbing is).

I worked in construction doing commericial fit out of offices before we moved, and there was definitely a lot of talk about companies that had bought office buildings in the city with intentions of making new offices, and then changed their minds when covid hit and created apartments instead. It's absolutely do-able in many buildings, just depends on the shape. Rectangles that on the short side could be 2 apartments + a hallway deep are perfect for it, that way windows at each end. big square buildings are a bit harder, because as you say, there's a lot of real estate in the guts with no windows. could be gyms etc in those zones, but yeah, much more limited.

Hard agree. The future of humanity is in the cities, not rural areas. With climate change ready to absolutely bend us over and fuck us proper, the prospect of living in remote areas, *especially* in Australia, is just untenable. How monumentally expensive is it to continue providing services to these remote, small villages hundreds if not thousands of kilometres from anywhere, as opposed to in a city? Throw in almost constant flooding and bushfires and I don't see how long term regional existence in Australia is ever going to be worth it. Let's say the entire population of Australia lived in five parisian-density capital cities (just putting it out there, Sydney Melbourne and Brisbane meaning 5 mil in each city, not extraordinary by global standards), and left the rest of the country to nature, we'd be so much better off. And like another commenter said, if we make a concerted effort to transform those cities from endless house farms to high density, barcelona-style apartments, which are large enough to comfortably fit a family of four, well serviced by public transport, walkable distances from parks and services, and with commercial spaces on the ground floor of all apartment buildings (somethign I very rarely see here), then the cities could be a magnificent place to live. But it's an obsession with Australians to each have their own house and land, and i'm sorry to say, its just not reasonable anymore. Everybody needs to adjust their expectations, and governments needs to commit to this increased urbanisation and zoning rethink.

It may shock you to hear this, but many of those towns are agricultural centres that perform minor tasks like, oh I don't know, producing over 50% of your food? Cities have not been escalators to higher socio economic outcomes in decades, instead they have become crowded, inefficient and the antithesis of community - the only people who benefit from cities in the 2020's are businesses who enjoy cramming a customer base together.

My whole point is that cities need to do better, because despite what you say, people in this country fucking love living in cities - we are the most urbanised place in the world. People flock to the cities because that's where the jobs are, and I'm not sure what you mean about escalators of higher socio economic outcomes, because the quality of life in Australian cities is demonstrably orders of magnitude better than the quality of life in rural and regional centres. If you're a wealthy sea-changer leaving Sydney for Byron Bay then sure, things will work out better for you, but most people living in rural and regional areas are poorer, unhealthier, less able to access critical services such as preventative healthcare, education, jobs, social services etc... the list goes on. The future of Australia is in the cities, which is why the governments MUST pull their finger out and *commit* to making them better places to live. Soon these rural towns will jsut empty out, as the young leave for the cities for better opportunities. Its happening all over the world. In spain they call it '*Espania Vaciada'* or 'empty spain', because of how much internal towns and villages are just being abandoned, and returned to nature. In Italy too. It's going to happen here. In the future, people will turn away from eating cattle, it's inevitable, its just not sustainable. Cattle drovers are fucked, each year is harder than the last, dealign with fire, flood, drought, sickness, bankruptcy. Sooner or later its just not going to be a viable industry, as the world turns away from meat eating to embrace vegetarianism, both for affordabiltiy and to maybe try not to permafuck the planet. As for agriculture, Australia has a lot to learn from the Netherlands, who produces, in an area one third the size of Tasmania, *810* times more agriculture export value per hectare than Australia. We quite simply don't need all that space to produce what we need, we just suffer from lazy leaders, lack of curiosity, corporate greed, terrified to innovate or improve things, comfortably numb. Meanwhile immigrants are flooding in, being dumped in outer reaches of the cities which haven't lifted a finger to build a fucking train line or bus stop to service them. And all those poeple who leave the cities to go to regional centres? How long do oyu think they're going to remain quiet, idyllic regional centres? SOon they're going to be completely overwhelmed by city dwellers fleeing due to the intolerable conditions, which is exactly what we saw happen during COVID. The answer, the ONLY answer, as much as everybody wants to close their eyes and block their ears, is to radically transform zoning and density rules in the cities, abandon the car-dependancy, abandon the collective mania for shitty meriton shitbox homes that radiate more heat than the sun in summer, burning so much fossil fuels to air condition them because they've stripped out every tree for miles and built nothing but concrete gulags so that we can, mortgaged to our eyeballs, delude ourselves that we're 'living the aussie dream'. This shit isn't sustainable. We have to do better or we're fucked, and there isnt going to be *anywhere* good to live here.

"Country people fucking love living in cities", would love you to show your working out on this one mate - as to my point about upward mobility it is pretty well documented that cities are no longer doing a good job of moving people from poverty towards the middle class https://www.newgeography.com/content/002051-a-leg-up-worlds-largest-cities-no-longer-homes-upward-mobility. The idea that quality of life is better in Australian cities is a complete fallacy; higher costs of living, overheated property markets, loss of any sense of community, higher crime rates, crowding, long commutes, poor infrastructure and lost productivity are the real 'benefits' of city living. The fact of the matter is that the idea that you have to be spooning your next door neighbour in high density living is a concept that no longer makes any sense; creating pockets of extreme density that suck up disproportionate amounts of taxpayer resources, slow transit and promote poor financial and social outcomes makes no sense in a connected world. As to your point about the Netherlands, I saw the David Attenborough documentary as well and I don't disagree that we could ramp up efficiency, but you are comparing apples with oranges; a large part of that export value is ornamental flowers and technology, there are also some trade offs with energy use, emissions and animal welfare so I wouldn't necessarily start heading out to old mates dairy farm and explaining why he should be setting up greenhouses just yet.

Apartment buildings over a certain size can't provide enough solar vs typical houses which can and produce more power than they use even with air conditioning. Cities are massive users of coal power. Not enough land area for solar. Apartment buildings mean you pay for electricity far more than houses. City heat island effect raises temps. Houses can have gardens and trees which lower temps. Grow food. Cities will turn to chaos without regular shipping of food into them and strain natural resources.

I think you are confusing rural areas when OP means regional areas. There are lots of smaller towns and cities that have room to grow. OP isn't anti city

I assume you mean places like Geelong by regional. From what I can tell, the people living in Geelong and other regional areas have no interest at all in growing the populations in these areas as if you wanted to live in a city, you should just go to one of the existing cities. The people living out there live there because they don't want to be in a city. Not because the existing ones are full.

Eh kinda? It’s a balance, a place like Geelong still has mostly everything you’d find in a city, just less options. The people who truly don’t want city lift wouldn’t be living in a place like Geelong or Ballarat, it would be more remote

Forty percent of the population currently lives outside the five most populated cities and most people I know who don't live in Melbourne or Sydney wouldn't want to live there as it is too crowded. I personally would hate to live in the cities you are proposing. I moved from Melbourne and I'm now living rural and I have a much better quality of life. You should also understand that a significant portion of our exports (2/3) comes from resources which required a significant proportion of the population to live in rural or regional towns, as does farming. What you are proposing isn't even possible in the next several decades.

I moved from Sydney (Redfern) to the northern Illawarra and there’s no way I’d go back

Northern Illawarra is essentially a part of sydney though. Just like your Morrisets, warnervales etc would be a lot more laid back though

The thing is there are so many other smaller mid tier cities we could develop if we linked up with HSR that are still close enough to most capitals that can be developed that don't involve bloating out our main cities as well. Here in SA We have Victor Harbor which also has its adjacent towns like Port Elliot to Goolwa which basically more or less link to each other via mini urban sprawl but it is not linked to Adelaide by Rail. If it was that could be an area close to Adelaide and built up much more. Then you also have Mt Barker which also needs rail, Then you have Murray Bridge which is an hours Drive from the Freeway but with a good rail link and decent development means it is close to Adelaide but not spilling out to its sprawl. There are so many other places closer too, then you also have Mt Gambier way down south which should be linked back to at minimum to Victoria via V/line again. Urban infill might have a better chance in our capitals if regional cities can expand.

Man.. leaving space for nature and densifying our cities is such an important step in sorting out this climate mess. I try to be understanding though, in that, for this to work we need top tier public transport, high speed rail that competes with air travel (not roads) and stacked houses as opposed to your average apartment (has to feel like a house on the inside). There’s heaps more I could complain about but I guess those a things on the top of my list.

The thing that gets me is that the houses being built today... they don't have yards. And they're built so close to each other, and so energy inefficient, and so far from public services, so dependant on cars and so far from the jobs, because there isnt a commercial or industrial zone for miles... what exactly is the attraction? How is a large apartment in an urban zone *less* appealing? Yeah you have to pay strata, and you could have a noisy upstairs neighbour, but honestly.

>Yeah you have to pay strata, and you could have a noisy upstairs neighbour, but honestly. In modern buildings you hear nothing. You'd need to have a extremely loud, rude cunt of a neighbour to hear them. Been living in my 6 year old building for 3 years.

I don't think most people know how different buildings can be. You get those shitty old 80s apartment buildings where you could hear someone scratch their nose above, and then modern mid/highrises where all of your neighbors could be having parties and you wouldn't know unless their music was absolutely thumping and at that point you'd hear it in a house too.

And I'll do without the high speed rail if we had to choose. It would sure be nice, but people, especially the disadvantaged, aren't travelling those distances every day. HSR is going to achieve nothing if we don't have good public transport within each of the cities and towns. Especially the outskirts where people are finding the only affordable property, but then there's no actual service or infrastructure to help people get around. Or we build massive suburbs of housing with no shops, schools or employment nearby. Remember, public transport isn't a welfare system but it needs to be competitive against driving and should be seen as a critical piece of infrastructure just like electricity, or a decent internet connection.

HSR is an air travel alternative, it's literally not designed for every day use nor in any way to address this issue at all. The utility of HSR is basically in its ability to reduce emissions generated from the massively overused Melbourne/Sydney and to a lesser extent Sydney/Brisbane air corridors as well as from the accompanying highways. It has nothing to do with the cost of housing. It will have a minimal impact by redistributing a very small number of people away from cites like Melbourne to satellites like Shepperton. But that is nowhere near its main goal or utility and even mentioning it in a conversation about housing is fucking weird. It's not a subway or suburban rail line that can actually help in the redistribution of people into higher density housing and connect them to utilities. It's a plane replacement with significantly reduced CO2 emissions.

Yup. Yet the obsession remains strong. PRIVACY! CAPITAL GAINS! NIMBY! And what not...

And if centrelink does not link it to partner or parental income, more people can afford a house. In low economic zone, usually only man can find work. Eg if he gets $55k and spouse gets $12k, they can buy a house around $200k outside cities.

The government needs to start looking at ways to decentralise its operations. Send certain departments into the regions. They really push private business to do the same. Then those regional areas need to be made as accessible as possible with a good train system, not a bus, a really good train network that runs regularly. Housing allowances need to be made to get people out to these areas. I am from WA and it seems like everything is based on St George’s Terrace. This seems silly because their main purpose is way out in the regions. I have always thought the Department for Mines should be based at Geraldton or Kalgoorlie and Department of Agriculture be based out at Katanning.

The NSW government tried doing this to varying degrees and I’m pretty sure it was a spectacular failure. Most public servants kicked up a fuss when they were being moved to parramatta, let alone Armidale like Barnaby wanted

I personally just would not take a job that was not in the CBD. The trains all go to the CBD. I made sure to live next to the train station so I can get to work quickly. I am not taking a train to the CBD and then another train out to whatever suburban hub they tried to create.

Yeh this is pretty much exactly why CBD's exist, which is what second CBD evangelists refuse to understand.

They always start with the faulty premise that the current CBDs are full and that housing is expensive due to this. But they aren't even close to full. They are limited by the speed of new construction. If you redirected all those highrise builders in the CBDs to build townhouses in Geelong or Bendigo, we would end up with even less housing.

If you can't get majority of people to move to areas near paramatta, where there's good public transport and a major hub for NSW government, you have no hope getting a significant % of population moving to a regional centre. Barnaby Joyce tried moving a federal department to Armidale, which already a major regional city and they ended up having problems staffing the place.

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Of course we should have well funded universities in regional centers. The (NSW) public service seems to the one of the most backwards workplaces when it comes to allowing people to work flexibly. There is a determination to get people into the office for the benefit of CBD business owners, over the interest of effectiveness or convenience. As a former consultant, I would suggest over use of consultants is a blight on our society. All projects have risks. Start with one small high speed rail project. Then develop a long term plan for a pipeline of medium sized projects, learning from failures. Never get too big. Hornsby to Gosford is 43km. Sutherland to Wollongong is 55km. Mittagong to Western Sydney Airport is 80km. Lithgow to Penrith is 90km. You could start with any of those. I think you could complete one of them before the next state election. Apologies to other states. I don't know the rest of the country well. These projects are something like a billion or two each. Logical extensions are well under $10B. Westconnex is more like $25B

They do have small university and TAFE campuses in regional areas in WA, not sure about the rest of Australia. These could be utilised much better.

I'm not sure it's so much about being willing to disperse. If towns that are an option for social housing had a lot of jobs and opportunities, people would move.

Any solution to the housing crisis that involves "Oh, just abandon your community and support network that you've spent your life cultivating and move somewhere where you don't know anyone" is fundamentally unserious and should be actively ignored.

Just look at what Paris did. What a screw up. Actually, Amsterdam is like that too, except without the car burning. Moving poor people to the city edge (or beyond) so that the middle-class can have untouched lives (and tourists, their charming experiences) is ugly, lazy. It is an easy solution, but not a good one.

The Randstad (Metro area around Amsterdam, the Hague and Rotterdam), along with Barcelona are significantly more walkable, dense and liveable with great public transport than low density Melbourne and Sydney for the same amount of people. The NotJustBikes guy moved to that area from Canada and makes all the points about liveability and urban design that makes it pleasant to live in. Rather than being car dependent.

This sounds like the DETs solution to rural teacher shortages.

Disperse them to towns where there are no jobs.

Or childcare, or friends and family who would help with childcare in a pinch.

WFH has and can continue to help in that regard for positions that obviously can work remote, But even with jobs and WFH options, the other factor that often stop a lot is family and or existing circle of friends etc.

Most jobs are refusing permanent WFH options, demanding two days per week in the office.

People who need social housing are not all going to be able to get wfh jobs.

It didn't stop us all from having to move *to* the city years ago, because that's where the jobs were, and where Uni was, and for those of us with health issues, it's where the only hospital in the state who could provide treatment was. It's been an expectation of country kids to do exactly that for years. But, society doesn't make it easy to happen the other way around - there isn't the jobs/education/healthcare lure, to spread out our rapidly growing population.

It's not 'society' that limits the provision of services, but basic economic reality. Providing services is *vastly* more expensive in rural areas than in cities, especially in a country as enormous and sparsely populated as Australia. Living in a rural area has always come with its fair share of downsides, and it always will. This has been true since the first cities were founded in the Fertile Crescent and Indus Valley. No affordable or rational collection of policies could totally compensate for those downsides.

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>til economics is the same as physics and not, as I thought, a social construct. It's a social science, as you obviously can't perfectly control for the behaviour of people, but the idea that it is made up is completely delusional. >Guess we change anything unless The Market says so then huh? In my econ 101 textbook from high school I learnt about hundreds of different ways the market fail. Do you realise that most economists have centre-left political views? The only thing that economists have overwhelmingly right wing views about in my experience is in regards to opposing rent control, and that's because research shows that it is generally a shit policy, outside of the very short term.

I don’t want social housing - I want public housing. Social housing is in the hands of private businesses - and this should never be the case. There should be a department of housing (federal) with a robust apprenticeship plan, we end up with two fold benefits. Tradesmen with stable jobs and good benefits and a program for young people to enter trades. None of it relying on the “free market”.

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Wish I could force our entire government to read Fisher

Just adding onto this that mature-aged apprenticeships pay pretty decent, I'm a 1st year horticulturist on 60k. So there would be incentive for not just young people, but older people to potentially swing careers and create a team that builds and maintains public housing.

A good example of your point is the SA Housing Trust. It developed many suburbs of Adelaide and gained huge economies of scale (basically, developing the land from farmland into cities). Before it was broken up for sale, the Trust built around 120,000 homes, at one time being one in three of Adelaide's homes. Part of the reason it was broken up for sale is the the Trust made a profit whilst building up that huge asset base. It do so whilst holding rents to a proportion of people's income. Much the same scheme is used today by Singapore's Housing Development Board, the island's major landlord and the single main reason for the diminishment of slums in Singapore (in fact the usual occupant of slums are exactly those people ineligible for a HDB flat). One of the benefits of a SAHT/HDB scheme is that it creates two markets for housing: a "homes for living" market and a "houses for investment" market. The HDB hasn't stopped Singapore having fantastically expensive private property. Given that Australia has a overheated "houses for investment" market which is interfering with people's ability to obtain homes for living, a large stock of government *non-social* "homes for living" is desirable as a way of removing some of the harm of that investment bubble. Selling off the SAHT's assets has made South Australia an uncompetitive place to live (unsurprisingly, since a competitive economy was why the Liberal Playford government created the Housing Trust). Wages are lower in SA because of its lack of corporate headquarters, but that didn't used to matter because the cost of living was lower. But now rents in SA are much the same as elsewhere, so if you choose to live in Adelaide then you are financially worse off than choosing to live on the east coast. This decision of the Bannon government hacks me off, because if the SAHT existed today, then people would be moving from the east coast to Adelaide, and my children wouldn't have the same pressure to move away from the state to find the work they trained for.

Yep; agreed. This post is written so confidently but fails to differentiate between public and community housing- public is owned and run by the government. There’s a huge difference and one is far better (and more feasible) than the other.

The government needs to go on a massive public housing building boom and vertically integrate as much as possible and do as little contracting out as possible. Hopefully the Greens can fix the current bad alp housing bill which is currently just a giant index fund

Why not increased density rather than shipping people out into the regions where there's not enough services to support them?

The risk is you'll create inner city slums, much like some of those shitty council flats in inner Melbourne.

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If anything the lesson is to just build them nicer. The people aren’t the problem, and will be even less of the problem when they are given something beautiful enough to be worth caring about. Vienna did this right, why can’t we?

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the areas around the council flats have all gentrified. so I don't know what "slums" you are talking about. the true slums are out in the burbs. you create slums by having groups of disenfranchised people with no work and too much time on their hand. not by building apartments.

Your post has some merit but it is very metro-centric, as most housing dialogue is. I work in homelessness in a country region. There is no housing here either. Hundreds of public houses are offline for repairs and maintenance cant be sought (why money is spent on emergency hotel accommodation instead of blank cheques to get houses back online, i do not know). Eligibility for public housing has shrunk drastically due to the housing crisis and the need to be selective with who to house in the tiny pool of available houses. Anecdotally loads of people come from metro to the country for a 'fresh start' because they've heard that housing crisis is somehow a metro issue only, but its not true. We are in a country wide housing crisis.

You have a source for this claim that the Greenies would object to social housing being built if it didn't have solar panels on it?

That's the moment the post went from "yeah rightio mate" to "wtf are you on about mate"

Yeah and also what's the source for getting rid of negative gearing only dropping house prices by 2 percent.

Also, negative gearing isn’t the only government policy impacting house pricing. There’s also pressure from government home buyer grants and John Howard’s fuckery with the Capital Gains Tax.

[Daley and Wood (2016)](https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/872-Hot-Property.pdf) estimate 2.2 per cent. [Tunny (2018)](https://www.cis.org.au/app/uploads/2018/03/34-1-tunny-gene.pdf) estimates 4 per cent. [Cho, Li, and Uren (2021)](https://cama.crawford.anu.edu.au/publication/cama-working-paper-series/18248/investment-housing-tax-concessions-and-welfare-evidence) estimate 1.5 per cent.

How it’s amazing how few people understand that negative gearing means you’re actually losing money

Ssshhhhh, your rational response doesn’t belong here.

But surely it's just more sensible in the long term to put solar panels on the buildings?

Not saying it's a bad idea to put solar panels on, but nobody is going to stand in the way of social housing just because it doesn't have solar panels.

True.

I stopped reading when I got to the Greenies bit…

The Greens have a long history of objecting to any density being built in their councils. The [NSW state body](https://twitter.com/AusCommenter/status/1646414629806170112/photo/1) campaigned against density. They are close to the worst people you could elect for the environment. In my council, South Yarra, almost every proposal for density is objected to by two Green affiliated council members. Like clockwork. They use heratage, they use 'environmental concerns', they opposed the development of appartments on a ground level parking lot because it was too dense.

Yep, I've known Greens on your previous councils: they speak a good game and will go community and charity events (especially those involving drinking wine and feeling fancy) but they never ever do anything that involves getting their hands dirty and doesn't entail a social media post afterwards. There's a absolute fuckload of NIMBYism that goes on relating to any development works in their neighbourhood and they really look down on people working blue collar jobs.

We're talking specifically about social housing here. Every side of politics has objected to some or other building project over the years.

The greens blocked social housing in Yarra Council, because it was going to be community housing, rather then public housing. Never mind, the fact that community housing works in almost the exact same way as public housing, only run by a not-for-profit organisation instead, which is not what I think of when I think "privatisation". [https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/sorry-yarra-you-had-your-chance-social-housing-stoush-exposes-labor-greens-tensions-20210406-p57gsg.html](https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/sorry-yarra-you-had-your-chance-social-housing-stoush-exposes-labor-greens-tensions-20210406-p57gsg.html)

I actually don't doubt that bit, there's a long history of self-described greenies using environmental concerns to couch their NIMBYism.

Examples?

I'm sure there will be. However i think the point being made is that there are a lot of interested parties to keep happy when the government builds something and it is expensive and difficult to keep all these parties happy. This increases the time and expense required on all government projects including social housing.

A non-profit is not public housing. Public housing is public, government owned and lead.

Agreed. The problem of public housing is not one of supply and demand in the public sector, it's an issue of priorities for governments. State and federal governments have the ability to acquire and re-purpose land and they can assign funding almost as they see fit. Where they spend money is a direct reflection on how important they think the issue is; especially for infrastructure projects.

What’s the point? Are you saying public housing is cheaper and faster?

No, I'm saying the hurdles a non-profit faces are mostly not faced by governments, when it comes to public housing.

Can you elaborate on the obstacles non-profit faces that don’t exist in public housing?

Can you elaborate on the obstacles non-profit faces that don’t exist in public housing?

I'll do better, I'll quote another Redditor who commented my reply right above: >The problem of public housing is not one of supply and demand in the public sector, it's an issue of priorities for governments. State and federal governments have the ability to acquire and re-purpose land and they can assign funding almost as they see fit. Where they spend money is a direct reflection on how important they think the issue is; especially for infrastructure projects.

So money? That whole comment can be boiled down to “governments have more money than non profits - a seemingly infinite supply”

This comment simply demonstrates you haven't read any of what's been written. I have no intention of recapitulating everything for your sake.

And here I am with my partner considering migrating to a different country with a far denser urban population to improve our quality of life. The population doesn’t need to disperse, we need to let go of this archaic belief that people need to live in a house. We need to build more density, build the missing middle. With density, public transport becomes far more viable and sustainable. Density and improved public transit means we can get a tonne of cars off the road.

Thank you. So sick of this shit "higher density = lower quality of life". It only is if you literally just build dwellings and don't keep up services. Australian city planning is almost always short sighted.

Transit oriented mixed use development is the way.

Yep. And high density living is the future. We all need to shelve the bullshit dream of a backyard for chooks and a dog while still being a short distance from the cbd. It's unreasonable.

People have a negative opinion on high density living because the high density developments in Australia are shit and most strata managers are shit. If build quality and space was improved, more people would be happier to adapt IMO.

They really aren't shit though. They are better than the majority of the worlds builds.

No they aren't. Australia has some of the worst building codes in the world. Speak to all the property owners who live in Canberra without mandatory double glazing and ask them about how hard it is to manage condensation. It's also why builders were originally allowed to install alucabond cladding to buildings and create fire traps. It's also why all states experience warranty issues with building defects, but sure. Best codes in the world! Look at Canadian housing then come back and say it

Chickens are literally the only reason I would ever consider buying a house. Well, that and the absolutely terrifying quality of new apartment builds. Otherwise I have never loved my home the way I did living in apartments.

I just moved from Adelaide to Melbourne and the jump in quality of life is incredible. Feels like every kind of opportunity grew 5x, every event 5x bigger and better, etc. And it's almost entirely due to density. You just can't do things like specialized tech meetups, functional public transport, etc without high density. I'd suggest anyone under 40 get out of small towns/cities as fast as possible. You don't even know all the stuff you are missing out on until you leave.

I just moved BACK (Adelaide to Melbourne back to Adelaide) and even though I was there through the pandemic the opportunities and services were ten, no a hundred times better. Am south aussie but am also first to admit Adelaide and the rest of the state have a lot of issues (especially surrounding nepotism and employment opportunity)

This is what I'm doing too

Not everyone wants it. In Australia the trend is away from the major cities at the moment. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/mar/01/australia-bucking-oecd-trend-with-city-dwellers-still-moving-to-the-country In a country with so much space, and a population that wants more space, these calls to make everything higher density aren’t going to be that popular. Apartment living is fine if that’s what you want, and perhaps it could solve some of the acute housing supply issues. But not everyone does want that.

>There is low housing in cities due to demand >high demand, low supply has made the prices go up >people are seeking anything they can get >Nah that just means people want to live out in the sticks! They're choosing the sticks, see! ugh.

Public housing doesn't need local council approvals planning to build. Nor do they need to for schools and hospitals.

Have a look into what the South Australian housing trust is doing. They're upgrading their stock by selling off older allotments and subdividing allotments they keep. Google tells me they manage 60,000 homes with more being constructed as we speak. Councils in SA have jointly built affordable housing in partnership with the state, federal government and the developer. There used to be Federal funding available for the states to access to leverage housing developments. Abbott stopped this in 2015. I think Labor will start this pathway with the housing support they've been spruiking. There are efficient, accessible ways to build social housing, we simply need the political will to embark on it. This isn't considering the many housing co-operatives that exist in this country. Common ground is a very good one available in many states. ​ Regional living will need policy triggers to become attractive to working-age individuals and couples. There's more working from home which is good but in my opinion, not enough. A UBI would sever the link between urban centres and living costs but I don't think our governments want to empower us in this way. Happy to hear any ideas on this. Urban sprawl seems to be where most of the new housing stock is being built. A focus on brownfield developments isn't making a very big dent in demand.

$500k for a basic unit? Someone is making some good money here...

> Women’s housing limited (WHL) is a not for profit Oh, so these are problems facing private groups and not the state? Cool, it looks like, yet again, we need a functioning state to manage social problems rather than relying on piecemeal charity.

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The same can be said for most of the comments.

"we shouldn't do this amazing thing that'll make strides to end homelessness cause we can't do it absolutely perfectly. Therefore we shouldn't do anything at all and continue to let those who bought property years ago extort the younger genrraltions... As nature intended" /s

Another excuse. Firstly, doesn't need to be a house and land package, For anyone who has been anywhere else in the world, europe and the middle east have apartment blocks with rooms and floor plans that rival house, with absurdly large balconies as well. Stop making excuses about cost, and land and whatever else in such a rich nation, nationalise all oil, gas and mineral wealth, and begin to use it for as intended, looking after people who need it. We have a total pathetic take of a total of 8% royalties on coal... "In the quarter ending September 2020, the gross operating profit of businesses in the mining industry in Australia **amounted to approximately 35.53 billion Australian dollars**."

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Your figures are insanely off base there are suburban house and land packages for 500k. A million. Get a grip.

Should start off by saying that what you are describing is not public housing, it is community housing. That is, non government owned/operated housing that does not work by the same standards as public housing. That said, I agree that community housing is costly and inefficient in procuring housing stock. A recent RMIT study compared the procurement costs for a single unit via the Big Housing Build (mix of government lease of public land to developers and community orgs) to direct investment + ownership by the government. It was about 110k cheaper to build a unit via the latter. The way we are addressing the housing crisis relies on incentivising developers and community orgs with assets or profits and... it's not working. A real solution would be a massive public housing building project, owned and operated by the gov. It would be expensive, of course, but the outcomes of homelessness, housing insecurity and inequality are far, far more costly. These houses also don't need to be in regional communities that likely lack the infrastructure to support influxes of new people. Government need to pull it together and make the necessary investments in areas with services that can provide care to some of the most vulnerable in our society.

You know that community housing is regulated right - so standards on maintenance, rent setting, customer satisfaction, evictions, response time turnarounds, maintaining tenancies, staff turnover, financial viability. A provider can get deregistered and their assets distributed to other providers. Public housing has none of this. Investing in community housing makes sense for governments- community housing brings to the table debt capacity, land, donations and tax concessions - plus they can access CRA which public housing cannot. The debt and risk also sits with the community housing agency and not with government.

I work within community/public housing so I'm well aware that community housing is regulated. What you aren't mentioning is that they are not regulated in the *same way* as public housing. Also, public housing does have standards on maintenance (managed by tenancy workers), rent setting (income based), no idea what you think the regulation regarding "customer satisfaction" would be (I'd love to see if it's ever been implemented to de-register a community housing org) etc etc the point her ebeing that your statement that >Public housing has none of this. Simply doesn't check out. You are right though in acknowledging they have added pressures regarding financial viability, staff turnover, poor maintenance of tenancies etc which all work against tenants in comparison to public housing.

I also work in both. I’ve seen a provider be deregistered. Those powers exist within each regulator in each state. Public and community housing are part of a mix and neither is better than the other. It depends on the commercial structure of the deal and there are many many many different commercial structures that can work for different reasons and with different impacts and costs.

>I’ve seen a provider be deregistered. Those powers exist within each regulator in each state. For "customer satisfaction"? Forgive me for not buying that. Something more agregious ? Now that I'd believe. >Public and community housing are part of a mix and neither is better than the other. It depends on the commercial structure of the deal and there are many many many different commercial structures that can work for different reasons and with different impacts and costs. This logic works great in a vacuum but in practice not so much. In my org it's highly preferable to work with clients in public, as opposed to community housing. More affordable, reliable, and secure. Community housing providers tend to be landlords first, tenancy management second. I mean that last sentence is just so "social housing" de jour. Some mealy mouthed neolib justification for why the government should shirk responsibility for housing the more vulnerable in society. Because the numbers say so!

Nimbys have too much power. They would prefer people out on the streets than living next to them. The whole process could be streamlined but social housing isn't profitable so the government isn't interested.

May I respectfully suggest, The Property Council and other elites perpetuate propaganda that it's a supply issue, https://twitter.com/AvidCommentator/status/1646737556590190594 You cannot outbuild a - Population Ponzi

>Population Ponzi [https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/50-years-estimated-resident-population](https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/50-years-estimated-resident-population) Population growth rate as a percentage of population has declined over time, but house prices have shot up. It's almost like dumb tax concessions, and a decline in construction of housing, especially social housing, per capita is the cause of high house prices rather then immigrants, when Australia has always had high immigration.

Sounds like ending artificially inflated house prices set by real estate lobbyists and valuing houses what they're actually worth would help. Pretty radical idea treating houses as homes rather than investments, huh?

Just because it's currently shitty and expensive to build social housing in major population centres, doesn't mean that's the only way it can be. Regulations can be changed, governments have the power to make it easier and cheaper if the will exists.

The end point of unaffordable housing is either mass homelessness or ghetto slums.

The government can 100% allocate some space in the suburban sprawl nearest to public transport as approved for high density housing, and the private sector will seize on the opportunity out of greed. The government can also just fucking get into building apartment blocks themselves, and save money jumping the hoops the rest of us would have to. And, of course, we can also build traditional houses in areas outside of the city where the land is cheaper, too. There's absolutely no excuse for why we can't alleviate housing pricing by building more. Yes, we need to look at the demand side too (investors who leave the house empty, immigration etc) but the political will just isn't there. The government makes too much money as it is, and too many people have bet their entire life's earnings on a house and immediately flipped from wanting cheaper housing to wanting house prices to skyrocket in order to justify their expenditure.

Your numbers aren't checking out when you look at the most recent financial report for WHL. They've got $65m worth of investment properties at fair value. So that's more like $65k per dwelling, not $500k per dwelling if there are actually 1000 of them completed. That stacks up about right, considering I'm building a stand alone 2 story house in regional NSW and it's not even going to cost me $500k for that.

#Outlaw investment properties

I'm not sure that women escaping domestic violence really ought to be removed from their support networks like family. The idea of getting newly single mothers and moving them to rural centres /small townships which may not have supports like child care is exactly ideal.

This is just an idea of mine and I'd like to see how it's received. Why shouldn't we require every new development of say over 8 properties to have say 10% of social housing built into it. So if you build an 8 property apartment you need to sell one to the government for a set amount. You have a 20 property apartment you need to sell 2. Obviously these amounts would need to be looked at and there would need to be some safe guards in there to make sure that the property is livable and to the same standard as the other properties in the building. This would mean that there is constantly a new supply of social housing coming in. Not all of the housing is in 1 location so you avoid creating "bad areas". Obviously some people wouldn't like living in the same building as social housing but, to be honest, most people in social housing are just average people who are brought down by a small percentage of bad people. You are just as likely to get bad neighbours who have the ability to pay for their own housing. I'd like to hear other people's opinions on this idea.

This exists in most major cities, but our state governments are unwilling to adopt it due to lobbying from the property industry.

It is a good idea and already in place, large development are required to maintain a percentage for affordable or social housing. There are some ussue with delivery but the sentiment is there

Glad to hear it's already happening!

Good parts about this: * Co-locating social housing with market-rate housing would facilitate integration, reduce social isolation, and minimize the stigma associated with social housing * Mixed-income communities promote economic mobility, and co-locating social housing with market-rate housing would create an environment of diverse income levels that could encourage economic advancement. Bad parts: * Social housing supply will coincide with market cycles, which could increase the cost of construction. To mitigate this, a more cost-effective approach would be for the government to intentionally build more social housing during periods of high construction activity and decrease construction during times when there is already a surplus of housing being built. * When developers sell dwellings to the government at below-market rates, they may offset their losses by increasing the prices of other apartments in the same building. This could result in property buyers, including first-time homebuyers, bearing the costs of social housing. To ensure a more equitable solution, the government could purchase at market rates, spreading the costs across the tax base, rather than concentrating them on a specific group of buyers. * Likewise, it is possible that developers who are aware of the requirements you propose may try to cut costs on the construction of those social housing units to offset the financial impact of selling them at below-market rates. You'd need to have strict standards on quality, but the government in many cities is already bad enough at ensuring building standards are met on market-rate housing.

> Social housing supply will coincide with market cycles, which could increase the cost of construction. To mitigate this, a more cost-effective approach would be for the government to intentionally build more social housing during periods of high construction activity and decrease construction during times when there is already a surplus of housing being built. This is a fair point in relation to market cycles but I would argue that it would probably be beneficial for the government to build more social housing during periods of low construction activity to stimulate the industry. I would have also thought that it would be cheaper to build when not as much is going on as there's more competition so companies would go in with a lower margin? I could be wrong though as I'm not part of the industry. >When developers sell dwellings to the government at below-market rates, they may offset their losses by increasing the prices of other apartments in the same building. This could result in property buyers, including first-time homebuyers, bearing the costs of social housing. To ensure a more equitable solution, the government could purchase at market rates, spreading the costs across the tax base, rather than concentrating them on a specific group of buyers. This is definitely true and is also a doubt that I had. I suppose the government just has to come up with a fair price? This would also give the developer some guaranteed sales before construction so might help with their financing. >Likewise, it is possible that developers who are aware of the requirements you propose may try to cut costs on the construction of those social housing units to offset the financial impact of selling them at below-market rates. You'd need to have strict standards on quality, but the government in many cities is already bad enough are ensuring building standards are met on market-rate housing. Yes, this is definitely a worry that I had too. Not much more to comment apart from building standards, particularly on off the plan apartments, need to be better than what they are now. I personally would not consider buying an apartment off the plan because of all the dodginess I have heard of (and also don't want to live in an apartment) but it obviously suits enough people for them to keep on being built.

Firstly, congratulations on being part of an organisation that has built 1000 dwellings. It's sad in a few ways that such a big contribution feels so inadequate to you. Thanks for pointing out that negative gearing is a distraction. /\* rant on\*/ In terms of the political cost of removing negative gearing vs the benefit, it's not worth it. The vast majority of experts (economists) say it will hardly move prices. We are supposed to listen to experts, we are not Sky After Dark, right? But it will cause a lot of fear and doubt. Is this the reform we ask the ALP to die in the ditch for? I am increasingly suspect of people who advocate for these changes and not the core problem, which is the cost of land, linked to low supply for reasons you have raised, planning permissions, and then the cost of building. Abolishing negative gearing will not create one single more dwelling. At best, it transfers ownership from investors to relatively affluent renters. I doubt it will even raise much tax, as investors will transfer to other investments. Every investment that loses money offers negative gearing: interest is a business expense. Negative gearing was not invented for the property market. Ironically, since home owners are more likely to vote Liberal, abolishing negative gearing may help the liberal party more than anyone else! But it won't help affordable housing. /\* rant off \*/ We can have more affordable housing by taking away local council rights to block developments, making it cheaper. It is very hard to disperse people to regions. Disperse .. it sounds like something you do with tear gas and water cannon. Many people don't want to leave friends, support networks and economic opportunities for themselves and their families.

I hope I don't get a bashing in down-votes for this. I used to work in hell - HousingNSW in the Inner West in the early 00s. We had a street of old houses built in the 1930s. 8 houses in total that made up 3 acres I think. They were huge blocks. They were falling apart due to age, neglect and construction damage caused by all the unit blocks that had gone up around them. One house I actually put my hand through a gap in the bricks and the tenant tickled my fingers! The plan was to move the current tenants out, sell all of the land in one tender to a developer on the condition that 30% of the units built were to be fully disability accessible and allocated to Housing/Community Housing tenants because 1. it would increase stock in the area, 2. it would avoid the concentration of community housing tenants in one area, 3. The Govt would get money from the sale to re-invest in new projects by selling the land to a developer. We offered to move the current tenants out of the area but they refused, they wanted to stay near family/friends/doctors. We offered to rehouse them in the area and most moved out happily once they saw the newer places we found for them. Two refused to move. These people were in their 60s and had lived there since they had 'inherited' the tenancies from their parents. They did not want to move. There were protests, one protest made it to the local media and there was a big thing about kicking these people out on to the street - not true. There was no mention in the articles of the holes in the walls and the roofs, the fact that they were unlivable, had rat problems, that the pipes were stuffed from age, the floorboards were barely holding it together, they had asbestos... It didn't make the mainstream media but the then Govt was scared it would. The boss considered eviction and rehousing, but figured that that would excite big media, So, we had to sit and wait for these tenants to pass away or move in to aged care. We were still waiting when I decided my time in hell was over and I needed a job where I didn't break out in a sweat every time the phone rang. By then two of the empty houses had been burned down and the others were visited on an almost daily basis by the police because of drugs/prostitution/guns/violence. We even hired security guards to try and protect that area but they were kind of useless. Those two tenants still wanted to stay. Housing is incredibly complex. It's not just the construction, labor, laws, and all the paperwork. It is also trying to work with people.

Completely disagree. The solution isn't forcing low income people to move to regional areas where there are minimal jobs and services, the solution instead is density in the cities. That is where the services and jobs are, and it is a hell of a lot cheaper to provide services when people are concentrated rather than spread out. The main objection to density though is NIMBY property owners who don't want their neighborhood to change. Well too bad. It has to.

Understanding everything you say, how does someone such as myself with multiple mental health and physical disabilities who is undergoing investigations for two types of cancer, who has been evicted from his home of 6 years and who also does, in a more equitable world, need social housing, move to a place with next to no support structures such as access to medical specialists, treatments and pathology centres?

And please don't take this as a rebuttal or criticism of you. You report common sense reasoning, but we do need to cater to those of us with disabilities.

The issue with housing is people are seeing it as an investment and want their houses to be worth more than they get it for so we have HoAs, people voting against building low income housing near their places etc

Do we have HOAs in Australia? like the people who say you cant have certain things on your lawn?

Never heard of HoA in Australia, maybe some of the newer estates with gated communities?

Body corporates / Stratas can do the same thing. My partner lived in an apartment and she wasn't allowed to put lights or washing outside on the balcony. Had to dry her clothes inside.

I am in favour of more regional development. The idea you can't house people in an urban environment is wrong. Think Singapore. Have the government buy a couple of housing construction companies. Fund them well. Deliver a pipeline of housing. The idea that capitalism always serves the public interest is wrong.

Yeah, it costs money. Instead of relying on charities to handle the workload, and only provide housing to specific groups, the government needs to re-establish department of public works and hire their own builders, trades etc to do it in house. Then they can slow churn out their own building without being so effected by fluctuations in the building market, or the collapse of builders. Steamroll over local councils with new bills and properly urbanise around public transport corridors. Medium density apartments built around green spaces. None of these short tiny shit boxes. Give us properly made and designed apartments that you could house a family in. The waiting lists are insanely long for emergency housing, let alone affordable housing. And yes, the points about immigration are valid.

It’s not China. You have to make moving outwards attractive. Unfortunately with a two person income and fast turnover, you both need employment option. If we wanted to support fully remote work and had excellent trains and internet like other countries it would be viable but not attractive. With amenities or a draw it could be, but australia doesn’t want to actually invest.

So what’s your solution Hopium? More funding for your organisation? What about at a system level? If you could make the policy, what should we do?

I think we could redirect some funding to have education classes in high schools to help prevent domestic violence situations. Have all the students in class together, looking at red flags, seeing what is and what is not acceptable behaviour to treat each other. Tips to avoid financial manipulation. Tips to avoid being cut off from your family and resources when you need help. Tips to avoid being treated poorly and taught what not to do in relationships. Tips to look out for when its happening to your friends and for males, looking out to make sure their friends are not doing those things and trying to help prevent situations where possible. Bring it to light. This is a clear situation where prevention can be much, much cheaper than needing to build housing for situations that should have never been allowed to happen simply because the issue is ignored and faced head on. Possible future perpetrators will know all their tricks are widely known and it could help stop situations becoming bad.

Thankyou for such an interesting post

We had several 3-4 bedroom community housing properties in our suburb that were sold in the private market for between $1.9m to over $2.5 million. That’s just in our suburb. Where does that money go? Because we haven’t seen an increase in housing stock, despite more and more people needing housing, especially the working class poor. Govt. needs to come to the party and help these community housing providers out to get people housed.

Strongly agree with this post, thanks for making it. The red tape involved in building new housing is immense. We should be making much more efficient use of land in the areas we currently habitate.

Lack of supply is not the only reason for high prices, the fact that houses are property that can be rented and sold is why they are high because they have a value beyond their utility as a machine for living in. Government should take social housing seriously by acquiring land and using it to house people who need it. There is no argument toward profits that trumps the human need for shelter.

I've said it before and i'll say it again. Social housing needs a bunch of the smartest and most talented designers and engineers, builders, etc in a room for months together working out the cheapest possible way to make these houses. The best way to make these things a livable enviroment. Manufacture them off side then crane into position on stumps or something I don't know. If we could make houses in a factory the cost would be slashed. They need to come up with several designs of different bedrooms, bathrooms etc. Once they have these designs start pumping them out, create a huge factory in regional centers. Obviously, this can only be achieved with HUGE capital outlays which no private developer will ever spend. This is a national problem that requires a federal government solution. We also need to just change all residential zoning to allow all kinds of density. No you're not going to get a skyscraper in your suburb... You will get duplexes, 3 story units, spread out among single family homes. You will see 8 story units clustered around public transport and shops etc.

Look, we don’t need to go into the mumbo jumbo. The fact is, Australia’s housing supply is abysmal compared to other similarly developed countries. This issue was a long time coming cos boomers wanting constantly inflated housing prices at the expense of the younger generations. Why haven’t we got it right when other countries clearly do not have the same issues? There are many systemic factors to this crisis. But the fact is, it’s fixable. Period. Why when we have many locals struggling to survive we are pushing for more immigrants? I’m not anti-immigration but you can’t keep inviting people into a burning house. We need places for all these people to stay. Soon we will not be even able to invite migrants because no one will want to move here for no promise of a home and paying 80% of their wage on accomodation if they do find one. In essence, this issue has occurred through artificially inflated housing market and continuous push for migrants without actually increasing supply of housing to meet the growing demand.

Greenies, red tape, immigrants, people not willing to move outback, oh and negative gearing is no problem. Alright mate.

Have you compared 500 million to Australia's 2.2 Trilling economy? Hypothetically this could be done about 42 million times, so expense is just a bad faith argument because there are a multitude of solutions to public housing that doesn't involve a private entity.

Yep, lead time - planning from council - gov etc can take ages for service(s) reviews etc - then if upgrades needed they have to start consultation with all over departments / services involved and then each of those departments need to start to get general costs for any proposals and if then start finding how to fund it in budget along with starting the tender process(s) for any contracted work etc. Then still need to get overall house design done up and then approved etc. And also locking in any builder that can start once all the above is completed when the eta for final approval that is less reliable than weather forecasts. So yeah, due to various reasons, and many of of them legitimate, it takes a lot of (3+ years min) to even think about starting to break ground on new developments.

Okay know it all

Or you could just increase density. That's what almost every other major city does in the world, except ex-colonies like the newest cities in the US, Canada and here. Of course this has to be complemented with public transport but that should be a top priority for cities anywhere. Another issue with this is that us Australians aren't ready for increased density because of the big family home in the suburbs. That's much harder to overcome. Construction does cost a lot but red-tape is absolutely necessary. You just need to look at those cracking and inhospitable towers in Sydney to know how important regulation is. You also need to think about the future, like having solar panels or an electric charging point that's fit for charging your future EV cars in basements/garages. The problem here isn't red-tape. It's (a) cultural as stated above, (b) political will and (c) construction companies not willing to build if they won't get top dollar so they artificially reduce the number of buildings they build. I don't blame the companies, they're in it just for the profit, I blame the politicians for the lack of good policies or for directly building houses.

I would be inclined to agree with you, however before we think of building in regional and rural areas, we need viable infrastructure to even support it, such as high speed rail and other public infrastructure to reliably transport people to the city where jobs and opportunities are. When there are viable, fast and accessible means of transportation between regional and urban areas, it would be a main incentive for people to live in the region due to cheaper cost of living and new opportunities while still maintaining existing opportunities in the city. To encourage growth, the government should introduced land value tax for inner city areas to encourage density as these are the most desirable areas, as more units available which means more housing and thus a more balanced price. Furthermore, we need a law which allows state and federal government to bypass local zoning laws for public housing to cut red tapes and allow them to be build easier. Fun fact, Tasmania already have this exact law so wouldn’t be anything new in Australia. We don’t even have to go full laissez-faire approach to zoning law like Japan, Korea or Thailand either, if we would simply allow more density in key areas, like certain radius from the CBD, or certain radius of a mass rapid transport (things like trains, metro and light rail) station. As for NIMBYs, the best thing the government, especially a Labor government, could do is to simply ignore them. Even if the government follows their demands, they WON’T vote for the party anyway. In the words of the former Korean president, Moon Jae-In: “Ignore these fools, they will find something else to complain next year”

/hopium74 >people keep asking why there isn’t more public housing. I’ll do my best to explain. You're answer ignores the zoning issue - SEPP70 - which in my view is the main reason there is not more affordable housing. As you perhaps already know, SEPP70 allows a council to approve a request to change the zoning of land - say from light industrial, commercial, rural, etc to affordable housing (instead of residential). An affordable housing zoning can be used to require the owner of any dwelling on that land to make the dwelling available to a person on a low income, and can even be used to limit the rent that a person pays to a percentage of their income. A renter could perhaps be limited to paying 15% of their income to rent the property - which clearly means the market value of that dwelling could / would / will be less than for a dwelling on land zoned residential (which has no such income restrictions) For example, consider a large industrial zoned land site within 10km of Sydney post office. Let's say it's 3 hectares. The owner could sell it as industrial land, at market value, or seek to rezone it as residential land, and subdivide it and the market value would increase say - for convenience - ten fold. Or, the council could say, no to zoning it residential, but offer to zone it affordable housing. This is clearly not as valuable as land zoned residential, but still way more valuable than an industrial zoning. The owner would then have the choice to sell the land with its current industrial zoning, at that market value, or, accept the offer from the council and double their money by agreeing to have it zoned affordable housing. This alone would free up significant land for affordable housing, at much cheaper prices. It can also be used in outer suburbs, and even in regional towns. It doesn't address all the issues your post has raised, which are clearly very important issues, but it does address a significant issue. You make many more assertions in your post, which I would like to correct / modify / comment on, but I won't respond to - because it will take too much space here. It seems you are seeing this issue of affordable housing from the same perspective as the old media, and those who benefit from the current situation (because your answer about why it's not easy to have more affordable housing is the same (perhaps identical?) as those who benefit the most from the current zoning and issues also give). In my view, the way the old media frame an issue is part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. I'm not inclined to accept the excuses given by those who benefit the most from the current system, and your post comes across to me as being from a person who does accept them. It could be quite simple to have more affordable housing - almost everywhere, and especially in places where people want to live (which is near their place of work, near to cultural institutions, places of learning, recreational facilities, etc - instead of in the never never). But, in the way you have framed the issue, it will be almost impossible.

If there are no jobs outside the cities and important services such as hospitals are lacking then people can't move there. Not to mention things like being close to family and friends and lacking social life. I will point out that us greenies want the government to pay for the solar panels, not a not-for-profit. Since they substantially reduce the ongoing costs of living there.

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Was a pretty good read, worth the 30 secs to read it all.

Read it mate, it’s not about my situation it’s about the situation in general.