The fundamental problem with housing in Australia
If predictions come true it will be another year of deteriorating housing affordability, prices will rise at twice the rate of disposable income — something that that has been going on for 25 years and has created what we all see now as a crisis.
The problem? Housing policy, like most of our polices are based on cruelty.
Not quite. Our housing policy is based around returning value to investors. That leads to cruel outcomes, and these are considered acceptable for the sake of investor profit. But it's not the terminal goal.
Awww, and I was sure that this was going to be the year my paycheck finally did more than keep me alive until the next one...
Once again, I'm not a tankie, but Mao was definitely onto something with the landlords.
This is the problem with tankies. By supporting the worst things about communist governments, they make people hesitant to support the actually really beneficial aspects of communism.
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Landlords are drains on the economy. Shifting capital into non-productive parts of the sector. Relying on a collective of mom-and-pop landlords to 'build' dwellings for a nation's population is akin to harvesting a coal mine with picks and shovels. It's moronic policy that doesn't scale. Where are the large institutions building? Why isn't the government providing a right to shelter? Fuck off with 'starter' homes. There are none. I'd be happy with a shoebox to sleep in at night.
Preach.
The fundamental problem with housing EVERYWHERE is that it's a finite resource and we allow individuals and orgs to stockpile/horde it.
All of the neoliberal and conservative measures to date were a lie designed to either inflate the cost of housing, or not have any meaningful impact while sounding like it does. Most would be completely unnecessary if we only allowed citizens and perm residents to own 2 properties max, including their PPOR; banning every other entity from owning residential property entirely.
I'm not generally a fan of bans. I'd rather just see the tax incentives to owning multiple homes behind your PPOR removed. And, if people do own multiple homes, there should be strong incentives to actually rent it out, such as a vacant home levy, and much, much stronger tenants' rights protection to enable tenants to treat their home as the home that it is.
One word: Immigration. If we dont admit this then we can scream into the echo chamber forever but its not improving!
No, blaming immigration is just a racist scapegoat. The amount of housing being built far outstrips the number of new households due to immigration. The problem is that the number of houses being bought by investors (instead of first home buyers) is almost equal to the number of new houses being built. Which is a problem caused by our incredibly harmful policies that treat housing as a financial instrument more than a right that people need to have. There's also a huge number of completely empty homes—again, a problem caused by pro-investor policies.
There are also issues with our council policies around what kinds of housing can be built where. Restrictive zoning laws that prevent more efficient medium-density housing, instead of most of our cities being made up of low density zoning that uses obscene amounts of land, and a preference to use the highest zoning possible in the smallest number of places possible, when low density is not sufficient (which is more expensive per capita due to the higher costs of materials, labour, and technical requirements associated with high rises compared to 2–4 storey row houses and apartments). And a severe lack of investment in public housing from our state governments.
Tax incentives. Public housing. Zoning laws. This is a problem created by all three levels of government. But immigration? Not a significant factor.
Immigration is a factor. The private- and government-sectors have not been building enough dwellings for the domestic market as is [i]and[/i] they've been increasing immigration. Immigration as it stands is government policy to dampen wage-growth. The domestic population's decline is probably on the government's mind too. An economy, apparently, can't be run by geriatrics. It needs young, fresh labour to be bled dry.
Turning the tap off on immigration won't fix the issue. It's obvious nonsense to state that, but it's likewise nonsense to state immigration is not a factor that affects the domestic market. If immigrants had no effect then why would a government import foreign labour? Again, it's part of it, but it's probably a very small part of it.
It's also nonsense that the media harp on about potential rate-cuts. Going to near negative rates was an absurd experiment that won't be repeated. (Rater, should not.) The result of that was a ballooning of fictional wealth in the value of assets held. Moderate to high rates will be with us for years, until wages increase and a more stable market emerges. Otherwise it's back to clown town.
The fundamental problem is that housing has become a product and an investment market, rather than the right outlined by Leo O'Connor 82 years ago.
Cutting immigration doesn't fix this, so you're incorrect.
Even if they stopped immigration today, companies would still own all the properties.