City Futures Blog

News and research in housing and urban policy, from Australia’s leading urban policy research centre.

City Futures Blog random header image

Entries Tagged as 'Affordability'

The elephant in the room: to broaden home ownership access, governments must tackle housing affordability head-on

September 20th, 2022 · No Comments · Affordability, Housing

By Prof Hal Pawson. Originally published at Red Brick, the UK housing policy blog. Boosting home ownership: an overriding housing policy objective for many decades, not only in Britain but the world over. And yet, as also seen in many countries, the past 10-20 years have witnessed owner occupancy rates static or falling – see […]

[Read more →]

Tags:

Introductory Remarks to Parliamentary Inquiry hearing: Housing affordability and Supply in Australia, 17 November 2021

November 17th, 2021 · No Comments · Affordability, Government, Housing, Housing supply

By Prof Bill Randolph and Prof Hal Pawson. We’d like to thank the Committee for inviting us to address you this morning. The issue of housing supply and its relationship to housing affordability is central to the pursuit of essential reforms to national housing policy. The City Futures Research Centre is one of the leading […]

[Read more →]

Tags:

Challenging the notion of housing reform as ‘political suicide’: household financial stress analysis of Australian political constituencies

October 28th, 2021 · No Comments · Affordability, Government, Housing

By William Thackway & Bill Randolph, City Futures Research Centre. Originally published by the Fifth Estate. In Australia, where more than 60% of voters own their own home, the notion of housing reform policies that may negatively impact housing prices is widely viewed as “political suicide” (Raabus, 2021). The term has been used to describe […]

[Read more →]

Tags:

Rising house prices putting at risk the economic stability of the nation

March 11th, 2021 · No Comments · Affordability, Economy, Guest appearance

By Duncan Maclennan, Jinqiao Long, Hal Pawson, Bill Randolph, Fatemeh Aminpour and Chris Leishman. Originally published (and headlined) by John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations. Image credit – Unsplash. Housing unaffordability is causing real economic damage that governments must treat more seriously. Put simply, rising mortgage debt poses risks for national economic stability, while current housing policies […]

[Read more →]

Tags:

Are we seeing a sustainable housing market recovery?

March 5th, 2021 · No Comments · Affordability

By Hal Pawson, City Futures Research Centre. At the start of the pandemic, when it became clear that extensive economic disruption lay ahead, there was alarm about the possible housing system damage that could result. In Australia, one of our largest banks projected a possible 32% hit to house prices. Most other forecasts at this […]

[Read more →]

Tags:

$1 billion per year (or less) could halve rental housing stress

November 2nd, 2020 · No Comments · Affordability, Government, Guest appearance, Housing, Private rental

By Rachel Ong ViforJ, Curtin University; Chris Martin, UNSW; Hal Pawson, UNSW, and Ranjodh B. Singh, Curtin University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. COVID has shown us what’s possible when it comes to alleviating poverty. For six months JobSeeker payments were doubled and then […]

[Read more →]

Tags:

After COVID, we’ll need a rethink to repair Australia’s housing system and the economy

September 11th, 2020 · No Comments · Affordability, Cities, Economy, Government, Guest appearance, Housing, Productivity

By Hal Pawson, UNSW; Bill Randolph, UNSW; Chris Leishman, University of Adelaide; and Duncan Maclennan, University of Glasgow. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. A new report from the New South Wales Productivity Commission (NSWPC) announces that “[higher] housing costs […] impose broader economic costs”. […]

[Read more →]

Tags:

A critical academic response to the evidence-free debate on planning reform

August 20th, 2020 · No Comments · Affordability, Government, Guest appearance, Housing, Housing supply

By Malcolm Tait and Andy Inch, University of Sheffield. Originally published on CaCHE Blog. Republished with an introduction by Bill Randolph, City Futures Research Centre. This blog summarises ‘The Wrong Answers to the Wrong Questions‘, a major new report from the UK that brings together a veritable “who’s who” of UK academic planners and those […]

[Read more →]

Tags:

Australia can, and must, build the post-pandemic recovery with more social housing

May 22nd, 2020 · No Comments · Affordability, Government, Guest appearance, Housing, Housing supply, Pandemic, urban renewal

By Bill Randolph, City Futures Research Centre, and Wendy Hayhurst, Community Housing Industry Association. Originally published on John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations. The Australian Treasurer has acknowledged that boosting infrastructure spend would be a good way to kickstart our country’s recovery from the current pandemic. What follows is a reasoned case for that infrastructure spend […]

[Read more →]

Tags:·

Coronavirus lays bare 5 big housing system flaws to be fixed

May 12th, 2020 · No Comments · Affordability, Construction, Economy, Government, Guest appearance, Housing, Housing supply, Pandemic, Tenancy, urban renewal

By Hal Pawson, City Futures Research Centre UNSW, and Peter Mares, Monash University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Australians had become used to walking past rough sleepers. Policymakers too, seemed unmoved by the people huddled in doorways or sheltering in parks under plastic sheets. […]

[Read more →]

Tags:·