Experts have said for years we need more social and affordable housing. So where is it?
Experts have said for years we need more social and affordable housing. So where is it?
One solution to the housing crisis has been raised over and over again for years: building more social and affordable housing. But it doesn't seem to have happened yet.
The problem is not that there isn't solutions, it's that there is zero political appetite to implement them.
Thatβs because real estate in Australia shifted over the past 30-something years from housing to an investment vehicle; building public housing ANYWHERE would result in nearby property values decreasing, and politicians donβt want to risk messing with any of that - so they just Conti to kick the can down the road.
Having spent 12-odd years in public housing in my youth, prior to my parents being able to afford to buy a home in the early 2000βs - I am acutely aware of the benefits public housing offers, and am devastated that fewer and fewer people will be afforded the opportunity we were given.
We need higher density zoning, and better public transport.
Hubs of high density housing joined by good public transport is, IMO, the answer.
Urban sprawl certainly isn't it. And these housing estates where they cram 30 houses on an acre is rubbish. All the negatives is single home ownership without any of the positives.
Also: why the hell doesn't government have more trades on the books? QBuild could be so much more than it is.
All we need is to force businesses out of the cities. IT will solve transport problem big time. There is no need for cities anymore.
Three reasons why cities/'large conglomerations of people and technology' remain necessary,
Communications infrastructure still has large costs. Decentralisation is good, but the costs do increase, there is a balance point between the extremes. Lemmy and the wider fediverse is a great example of a search for that balance point.
Network effects, alone with my own thoughts i'm a scrub with a mug, together with others help those thoughts can become gems.
Company towns, an extreme but possible outcome, are a bad idea. It is a monopoly using geography and societal connections to reduce the competitiveness of your employee base.
When start seeing how much money goes to "illegal settlement project" in Palestine, coming from countries that going through housing crisis, you know it is fucked up already and there is no cure other than absolute revolution.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Despite the expert consensus that we need more stock, as well as the announcement ofΒ new moneyΒ andΒ projectsΒ across the country, social housing wait lists have stretched out to more than a decade in some areas.
It's still reduced compared to the market, but is less beneficial to the tenants," says Michael Fotheringham, managing director of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.
He says the main reason Australia has a shortage of social and affordable housing is chronic underinvestment by governments of all levels and political persuasion over decades.
A Swinburne University study from 2022 projected costs could exceed $1 billion annually by 2036 due to spending on homeless, health and justice services if the supply of social and affordable housing wasn't "significantly improved".
"Most people in the industry would now agree it was a big mistake to build very large public housing estates especially on the edges of cities where there wasn't good access to jobs and services.
While there's no silver bullet for the crisis, expanding the supply of social and affordable housing will be a key component of any fix, Professor Pawson says.
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