Affordable Homes for All Australians - Practical and Timely Solutions to the Crisis

I am a renter and potential first home buyer, myself, so I understand your frustration.
Here is the thing. The spin doctors out there will tell you the housing affordability crisis is nobody’s fault. It’s just economics. Well, yes it is economics, in part. But there is certainly someone to blame. What is more, something could be done quickly if our politicians so desired.

Read on below for a discussion on how our house prices have gotten to be the most expensive in the world! Then, on the right there are a few suggestions about what we, together, can do about it.

We have heard a lot about the “fair go” lately, so let us see who is fair dinkum..more

Affordable Homes for All Australians

I know people will want to point straight to increasing interest rates as the problem. And this might be a convenient scapegoat for some. But that is not the main story. Not at all.

Here is where it does have something to do with simple economics – supply and demand. Sure, there is a high demand and supply has not kept up. But, why has supply and demand gotten so out of whack?

Now we are getting to the important stuff. More

Submissions....more
Australia2020 Summit
Select Committee on Housing Affordability

Of course we do! In many places in Australia prices have almost trebled since 2000. Whereas houses were around 3 times average earnings, or less, the Australian average is now 6.6 times. (This compares with an average American value of 3.7 times – which commentators there have called possibly their biggest housing bubble in history.) More

Would you like to buy your own home, but you can't afford to?

Or, is your rent skyrocking?

And does that make you angry?

Rebuffing the spin doctors:
YES WE DO HAVE A HOUSING AFFORDABILITY CRISIS!

What are the

Solutions?

I have nothing against someone wanting to make a quid. But the reality is that price increases, driven by huge investor demand, have been at the cost of the younger generation’s aspirations of owning a home in which to raise their families......

We need to implement measures to increase supply of new housing and reduce investor demand for existing housing.

Removing the current distortions in the housing market, which favour investors, would make a significant and timely improvement to housing affordability in Australia. Read on to see how this could be achieved..... More