Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Tag: Politics

Australia’s Housing Crisis Has Become A Fierce Political Battle

Australia’s housing crisis has become a fierce political battle that could have major implications for the next federal election

A fierce battle over housing is set to intensify and define the next federal election as Labor, the Coalition and the Greens target a growing cohort of voters who believe they’ve been locked out of home ownership for life.

The great Australian dream of owning your own home has been fading for a long time — there’s nothing new about this. But the crisis is now baked in — and it has arguably become the big generational disrupter, changing votes and threatening to hurt the government at the next poll.

Read the original article at abc.com.au

Australian Housing Wealth Is Meaningless, Destructive And Fundamentally Changing Our Society

High-priced homes do not create wealth, Alan Kohler says, they redistribute it. Now financial success is largely a function of geography, not accomplishment

My parents were married in 1951 and, with a war service loan, bought a block of land in South Oakleigh, eight miles from Melbourne’s central business district.

I don’t know what my dad was making then, but he was a carpenter and apparently the average wage of a carpenter in 1951 was about 80 shillings a week, or £350 a year. And judging by average prices back then, they would have paid about £1,000 for the land. (By the way, the median house price had more than doubled in 1950, recovering from the big fall caused by price controls during the second world war, on which more later.)

Dad built the house himself, including making the bricks, working on weekends and at night, and Mum and Dad lived in a garage, to which I was brought home when I was born and where I spent the first three years of my life. But if they had bought a house and land package, which was rather more common than building it yourself, they would have paid about £1,250. So, like the median family at the time, they would have paid about 3.5 times household income (Mum didn’t work) for their first house, which was about average for the time.

Read the original article at www.theguardian.com

The federal government’s signature housing policy has passed. This is what it’ll actually do

After more than half a year stuck in the Senate without enough support to become law, the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) has finally passed parliament after Labor struck a deal with the Greens.

While it’s been touted by the government as the biggest-ever investment into affordable housing in Australian history, the policy is a little complicated, as it isn’t a direct injection of funding into housing.

Zoned Out: How Land Use Restrictions Divide The Nation

Housing policies ensure continual wealth gains for current home owners while leaving renters and potential buyers locked out of the market.

Housing policy is a battle between the haves and the have-nots. The haves are the current generation of wealthy home owners. They have enjoyed large capital gains over the past few decades and are sitting on property worth hundreds of thousands – often millions – of dollars. They support the policies that have delivered these windfalls.

The have-nots are renters and future generations of potential home owners. These groups are disproportionately young and on lower incomes.

Read the full article on John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations

Accessible housing design to only be used across half of Australia

Thousands of people will be denied choice in where they live as half of Australia’s states choose to opt out of a building code which would impose minimum standards of accessibility on all new house builds.

The silver standard design guidelines from Liveable Housing Australia (LHA) were incorporated into the National Construction Code (NCC) earlier this year to come into effect in September 2022.

The guidelines require a step-free path from the street to the door, wider doorways, hobless showers, reinforced walls in bathrooms to support future installation of rails, and a toilet at entry level.

However, New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia have all opted out of the new requirements, meaning the standards will not be enforced in those States.

House prices skyrocket and social housing collapses under the Coalition

The extraordinary prices that houses in Australia are now fetching were unimaginable just six years ago. That was before Scott Morrison became treasurer and, later, prime minister.

The values of most houses in Australia’s big cities and in some smaller cities and regional areas have more than doubled in that time.

This has locked countless first home buyers out of the housing market, probably forever, while multiplying the profits of rich property speculators.

Read Alan Austin’s full report on the Independent Australia website

Affordable housing advocates say Labor abandoned them

‘List of enemies’: Affordable housing advocates say Labor abandoned them

The nation’s peak organisation on affordability and secure housing for Australians on low incomes has accused federal Labor of rejoining a “list of enemies” against increasing home-ownership in favour of benefiting wealthy landlords.

National Shelter, which campaigns to improve housing access for low-income earners, has joined with several social groups to savage the federal opposition’s decision for scrapping key tax policies as it seeks to slimline its policy platform ahead of the next election.

The opposition went to both the 2016 and 2019 elections promising to halve the 50 per cent capital gains tax deduction and limit negative gearing to new properties only, attracting fierce resistance from the government and the property and construction industries.

Read more in the SMH

Anthony Albanese
Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/50964933@N08/7139459247/