What? From the lesbian MP who said we didn’t need same sex marriage?
I am shocked!
What? From the lesbian MP who said we didn’t need same sex marriage?
I am shocked!
Commitment phobic?
Bravo Labor Bravo… They couldn’t vote yes for the motion that detailed Israeli’s withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank and pay reparations because it would somehow effect their aims for a two-state solution. It’s absolutely fucking perplexing that THIS is the shit they come up with.
Agreed that Labor deserves to be called out on it. Again, the LNP would have done no better. Our international reputation is worse now, thanks to our leaders on either side of the floor.
Yep. Lead story on ABC news is Simon Birmingham ‘slamming’ the government for not having the guts to vote No.
Except bringing the LNP into the argument just pulls attention away from the fact that Labor didn’t have the balls to do the right thing. This one is squarely on the shoulders of Albanese and co and I argue, they should simply know better
I think the point is that a least you know, and expect, the LNP’s position on this.
Labor are too fucking gutless to do the right thing for fear of losing the Jewish money. They’re just as complicit.
Say what?
Fixed it for you.
Nail, head, hit, the, on the.
So read a few articles again about housing affordability, including Gittins who is great as always. The one thing I can’t get my head around is demand. Yes population is growing, so we need to shift to higher density. Overall we don’t seem to have a massively expanding homelessness problem, so there are enough residences for the City’s population unless there’s been a massive shift into shared accommodation
Buyers are really shifting from another house, freeing that up for sale, net zero effect. Or families/individuals buying first home are shifting from rental to owning, so again net zero. The numbers shifting from share houses to owning outright (without renting spare rooms) is likely minimal.
When looking at the housing market, it’s not population, it’s those buying houses, demand is buyers not people. So it is owner occupiers plus investors. So policies to reduce the number of investors reduces demand and therefore prices. There’s not a lack of stock, it’s excess competition, especially in such a distorted market.
Even if it is shared accommodation, like people living with parents longer, how does that track with there being enough renters to fill the investors houses?
What have I got wrong here?
Also why the greens are rightly pushing for actual meaningful reform to change how the market works rather than just mucking around at the edges
Because you live in Sydney?
Ive not been down to Wentworth Park in years so I don’t know how many are there these days.
There’s a forest in between Bathurst and Orange with people living permanently in it. There’s places in Bathurst with camper vans that appear to be permanent fixtures.
I can show you two or three places starting at the Sandgate Yacht Club up to Redcliffe in Brisbane with homeless people living in them. This is all in the last half decade from when I started visiting that part of Brisbane. If I was homeless, I’d be heading to QLD. Better weather for living rough.
Oh agree there’s a homelessness problem. But the market is absolutely broken in a “we can’t afford rent” way, not in a “we can’t find a house to spend our money on” way.
That’s the same problem.
Further to Holly’s comment, homelessness is also becoming an epidemic in regional and rural areas.
The closer to the coast you are more and more of the rental stock has been converted to short stay accommodation.
This is forcing people further inland where there is minimal rental stock to begin with as it wasn’t traditionally an investment market.
Even here in Kyogle there’s more and more air bnb’s popping up. There’s people living in tents and caravans at the showground because there is no other accommodation around.
The other issue is people from the city buying an investment property, sight unseen, during the COVID years and paying well over what the true market value should have been.
Interest rates and cost of living have gone up so they’re having to pass that onto the renter and people in this area can’t afford it.
Well yes, but I’m kind of trying to get at it from a different angle. If all existing houses were $100 to buy, and investment properties were illegal, would there still be this rate of homeless people? Or do we have enough stock for the people we have, and it’s just market distortion/capitalism that results in homelessness?
Same issue I guess. So the buying market is owner occupiers + invest to long term rent + invest to holiday let. Putting aside there is some need for the latter 2, the question is whether we have enough stock? If we miraculously shifted policy to favour housing as a human right, and outlawed owning as a way to make money, would we still have this “supply problem”?
Part of what you’re missing is the volume of young people in cities who, instead of renting a flat with friends, are instead living at home for extended periods, newlywed couples are moving in with in-laws where they’d previously rent or buy. Even relatively well-off couples are buying apartments rather than houses, driving up prices of what used to be entry-level properties that first-time buyers traditionally started with.
That’s a lot of pent-up demand that isn’t being met because people who want to move out on their own find it impossible.
There are a heap of issue that contribute and supply is certainly one of them. However the number one issue first and foremost is that housing has been turned into a commodity. Or maybe more that it has been turned into THE commodity in this country. Howard & Costello set the ball rolling with their tax policies and those with money saw the results. Basically every relevant government policy for the last three decades has pumped it over and over again. First home buyers grants, equity schemes, deposit guarantees, proposed super schemes - every single of them only pushed the prices higher. Especially when combined with super low interest. You could earn more buying a house, doing nothing, then selling it and get a fucking tax break into the bargain. Unless you are addressing the outrageous increases in cost then you’re only making the issue bigger.
Prices have to plateau for a couple of decades for this to be sane again. The only way for that to happen is to take away the tax breaks and increase supply.
No one has the guts to do it.
The other massively relevant issue that no one ever talks about is that the neo-libs have convinced the country (and most of the anglo-sphere) that government just cant - and shouldn’t - do shit. In my opinion this is the compounding factor that is almost never addressed. The government could build, but they dont because “the market” can always do it “better/faster/cheaper”. Oh and taxes are evil and government workers are lazy entitled scum who never help you or make your life better. Probably the worst lie that’s been sold to people in the last half century.