City Futures Blog

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

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Entries Tagged as 'Housing'

Labor’s housing pledge is welcome, but direct investment in social housing would improve it

December 19th, 2018 · No Comments · Affordability, Finance, Government, Guest appearance, Housing, Housing supply

By Julie Lawson, RMIT University and Laurence Troy, UNSW. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Despite recent falls in the housing market, housing costs and indebtedness bite deeply into household budgets, especially at Christmas time. Just over 433,000 households confront housing stress and homelessness every day […]

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Shorten places housing at the centre of the 2019 election

December 18th, 2018 · No Comments · Affordability, Government, Housing, Housing supply

By Hal Pawson, City Futures Research Centre. Originally published on John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations. With his weekend announcement of a $6.6 billion affordable rental construction program, Bill Shorten has dramatically reinforced Labor’s emphasis on housing as central to the party’s 2019 election policy pitch. The initiative, Labor’s first significant housing investment pledge in four federal […]

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Australia needs to triple its social housing by 2036. This is the best way to do it

November 15th, 2018 · No Comments · Demographics, Finance, Government, Guest appearance, Housing, Housing supply

By Julie Lawson, RMIT University; Hal Pawson, UNSW; Laurence Troy, UNSW, and Ryan van den Nouwelant, Western Sydney University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Australia needs to triple its small stock of social housing over the next 20 years to cover both the existing backlog […]

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Who wins and who loses when platforms like Airbnb disrupt housing? And how do you regulate it?

November 8th, 2018 · No Comments · Affordability, Airbnb, Cities, Government, Housing, Housing supply, International, Law, Marginal rental, Private rental, Sharing, Sydney

By Laura Crommelin, Chris Martin and Laurence Troy (City Futures Research Centre, UNSW Sydney) and Sharon Parkinson (Swinburne University of Technology). This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Short-term letting platforms like Airbnb are changing property owners’ and investors’ views and behaviour in the Sydney and Melbourne rental […]

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An open letter on rental housing reform

September 25th, 2018 · No Comments · Government, Guest appearance, Housing, Housing conditions, Law, Tenancy

The right of landlords to terminate a lease with no grounds is the most serious deficiency in residential tenancy laws in New South Wales. Shutterstock Following a review of the New South Wales Residential Tenancies Act 2010 in 2016 and extended consultations, the NSW government has introduced a number of reforms to parliament. Debate is […]

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Lifting the energy efficiency standards of low-cost rentals

September 19th, 2018 · No Comments · Climate change, Government, Housing, Housing conditions, Sustainability, Wellbeing

By Edgar Liu, City Futures Research Centre. The Australian Senate’s Environment and Communications References Committee recently published the Final Report of its Inquiry on current and future impacts of climate change on housing, buildings and infrastructure. This came about after extensive community consultation on the back of parliamentary flip-flopping regarding if and how Australia will […]

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The new national housing agreement won’t achieve its goals without enough funding

July 17th, 2018 · No Comments · Affordability, Finance, Government, Housing, Housing supply

By Vivienne Milligan, City Futures Research Centre. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. This month, yet another policy agreement on housing between the Commonwealth and state and territory governments came into effect. The National Housing and Homelessness Agreement is the latest version of a 73-year-long series of such intergovernmental […]

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Can the market provide affordable housing?

July 9th, 2018 · No Comments · Affordability, Government, Housing, Housing supply, Marginal rental, Private rental, Sydney

A new-generation boarding house in Randwick built under AHSEPP, with units that were advertised for $500 a week. By Laurence Troy, Ryan van den Nouwelant and Bill Randolph, City Futures Research Centre. Originally published by The Fifth Estate.  There is an ongoing debate about the best role for the planning system in addressing the shortage […]

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Inclusionary Zoning in Ontario

June 25th, 2018 · No Comments · Construction, Government, Guest appearance, Housing, Housing supply, International

By Richard Drdla, Richard Drdla Associates, Toronto, Canada. Earlier this year Richard, an expert on planning for affordable housing in North America, wrote us a guest blog post about the Greater Sydney Commission’s affordable rental housing targets. This post discusses the latest developments regarding inclusionary zoning in Ontario, Canada. Richard is a guest speaker at the […]

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Higher density and diversity: apartments are Australia at its most multicultural

June 19th, 2018 · No Comments · Demographics, Guest appearance, Housing, Migration, Strata, Sydney

Image: Marcus Jaaske/Shutterstock By Christina Ho, University of Technology Sydney; Edgar Liu, UNSW, and Hazel Easthope, UNSW. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Increasing numbers of city dwellers live in apartments. This is particularly the case for migrants. And that makes apartment buildings important hubs of multiculturalism in our cities. However, […]

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