The New Zealand government has intervened heavily to fix bottlenecks in housing supply.
There are equivalent things that Australia could be doing.
This article references land use and planning interventions that boost supply.
This 15minute segment on Radio National Morning Program provides an update on the Voice with guests providing insights to the current status of this important structural proposition.
It looks increasingly unlikely the Federal Government will present legislation for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament before the next election.
The final report from the advisory groups tasked with putting forward models for local regional and national voices has been given to the Minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, but not publicly released.
Guests: Tom Calma, former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner; co-chair of the senior advisory group on co-design
Professor Megan Davis, Chair of the Expert Mechanism on the UN Rights of Indigenous People
Associate Professor Hannah McGlade, Senior Indigenous Fellow at the Office of the High Commission on Human Rights
Australia’s housing market continues to surge, with prices lifting for the 14th consecutive month and the median home adding a staggering $126,700 in value over the past year.
CoreLogic’s latest figures show a 1.3 per cent increase in November, taking the annual price growth rate to 22.2 per cent.
But it was the softest rise since January when values gained 0.9 per cent.
Since peaking in March, when housing values jumped by 2.8 per cent, there has been a notable easing, CoreLogic says.
The group’s research director Tim Lawless puts that down to a number of reasons.
“Virtually every factor that has driven housing values higher has lost some potency over recent months,” Mr Lawless said on Wednesday.
“Fixed mortgage rates are rising, higher listings are taking some urgency away from buyers, affordability has become a more substantial barrier to entry and credit is less available.”
Brisbane and Adelaide are the only capital cities yet to experience a slowdown.
In the Queensland capital, home values put on 2.9 per cent last month – the highest rate of growth since October 2003.
Interest rates are expected to rise in 2023.
Council to Homeless Persons chief executive Jenny Smith said Ms Barnes had been at the forefront of transforming dehumanising and dangerous night shelters into a model of safe and supported crisis accommodation.
“She’s worked on the front line delivering direct support, as a senior service manager, and as a policymaker in government,” Ms Smith said.
Ms Barnes said one of her proudest moments was closing the doors on the Gill Memorial Hostel – which had dormitories with 50 beds – and opening Flagstaff, a pioneering model of crisis accommodation.
The Victorian Public Advocate and Mental Health Legal Centre have both raised concerns with federal and state authorities that some supported residential services proprietors may be “double-dipping” – using residents’ NDIS funding to pay for services already covered by room and board fees.
J. David Chapman is professor of finance and real estate at the University of Central Oklahoma reflects on housing as the USA nears the end of 2021, and he is thinking about limitations and threats to otherwise successful communities.
In this era of political divisiveness, there are two things that David suggests most can agree on:
1) There is a tremendous need for affordable housing throughout America.
2) There is a strong “Not in My Back Yard,” or NIMBY, agenda.
There is a shortage of more than 7.2 million affordable rental homes for extremely low-income renter households, defined as those with incomes at or below the poverty level or 30% of their area median income.
To make matters worse, the lack of affordable for-sale homes drives up rents and increases prices of multifamily investment properties.
Solutions that could be considered include:
1) expediting the approval process by adding “Inherently Beneficial Use” to municipal land use laws to circumvent “NIMBY” opposition;
2) expand taxpayer funded one-time front-end subsidy programs for affordable housing and encourage the expansion of existing subsidy programs at the federal, state and county levels;
3) use the power of zoning to create subsidies necessary for providing more affordable housing and market rate housing at no additional costs to the taxpayers.
Over the past few decades, huge transfers of land from public to private ownership have occurred throughout Britain. Since Margaret Thatcher was elected prime minister in 1979, one-tenth of the entire British landmass, or about half of the land owned by all public bodies, has been privatised. This has included, for instance, dozens of former military bases on Ministry of Defence land.
In our cities, one result of this land privatisation has been the long-term shift from public to private housing tenure: social rented housing declined from 31% of Britain’s total housing stock in 1981 to just 18% in 2012.
As what was effectively our common wealth is sold off, local authorities are losing the capacity to address the interconnected housing and climate change crises. From London to Leeds, this transformation of land has impeded democratic involvement in urban planning. It has displaced working-class communities. And it has heightened social inequalities.
In a bid to make Liverpool the fairest and most socially inclusive city region in the UK, the mayor, Steve Rotherham, launched England’s first land commission in September 2020.
It argues for a fundamentally new understanding of what land is.
Proposals including a cap on nights booked in unhosted short-term rental accommodation are one of a number of recommendations open for consultation by the Western Australia state government as part of a new draft planning policy.
The new Draft Position Statement: Planning for Tourism and Guidelines report aims to put local councils in control of how private units, apartments and homes within their jurisdictions could be offered and operated for short-term rentals on websites such as Airbnb and other home-share platforms.
Australian Hotels Association (WA) CEO Bradley Woods said, “the Draft Position Statement proposes a regulatory model that will allow genuine, hosted home sharing to continue, but will see proper regulation of unlicensed commercial accommodation services.”
Comment is being sought from local councils on whether owners of such properties should be exempt from local planning and development laws.
A 5-minute segment from Radio National Breakfast Program with Cathy Van Extel and Cassandra Goldie, CEO of ACOSS.
With an election looming, the Australian Council of Social Services and its members are calling on both major parties to reject tax cuts in order to fund essential services.
The organisation is warning that an incoming government may struggle to close a gap in services with the revenue available.
Woppaburra woman Samala Cronin stands on the pristine white sand of Konomie, or North Keppel Island, watching her people be formally recognised as the area’s rightful custodians.
It is a bittersweet moment.
Ms Cronin said, “we are the only native title group to be removed from country for over 80 years and to achieve exclusive native titles rights over our country.”
The native title claim group includes descendants from Yulowa “Weerobilling”, Nellie “Ooroong-ooran”, Oyster Maggie, and Fanny Lohyse/Singh.
New research by the ACOSS/UNSW Poverty and Inequality Partnership shows renters on low and modest incomes are in the grip of a housing pincer, especially in regional Australia, as surging rents and the Commonwealth’s neglect of social and affordable housing creates acute stress.
The report notes that while some States have recently increased their investment in social housing, they simply lack the financial firepower to make up for a decade of neglect.
Four state Governments (Victoria, Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia) have announced significant self-funded public housing construction programs as a component of post-pandemic stimulus investment, providing an investment of nearly $10 billion over the next few years.