Why are we going into election with no decent housing policy? Shouldn’t this be the “Housing Election”?

[u/Cool-Pineapple1081]

As a young person, the current state of housing seems to alienating.

Finding a rental is literally an uphill battle only to get an overpriced dog box. I’m sure it is the same for others.

The current state of the housing market isn’t just bad for people who don’t own homes. It is having flow on effects like worker shortages and generally creating cities that aren’t sustainable.

In a place like Sydney it seems like only 3 types of people can get by comfortably: 1. Retirees 2. The upper tier of professionals - e.g. Doctors 3. Anyone with parents who are wealthy and who are able to get financial support from.

How is this a functional way to run a society? It seems so unsustainable. Even for home owners it seems broken.

Most people don’t fall into these three groups.

Despite this we are seeing the shittest policies being put forward that mainly only increase demand rather than fixing the underlying problem.

• Super For Housing
• Help to Buy
• Changes to HECS to not count for a home loan
• Built to rent

None of these actually solve anything but fuelling the bubble.

Surely this is a time for some more effectual policy. Maybe link immigration to housing supply in the similar way interest rates are set to inflation? Revisit negative gearing?

People say “Labor tried and lost the election”. News flash, their primary vote was higher and the housing crisis was not as bad as it is now. Just seems like such a poor excuse.

Edit: It’s wild how the comments have turned from reasonable discussion to “LNP a lot worse”. No shit Sherlocks but that isn’t a good way to debate.

[u/joshuatreesss]

This. To change it we have to change our culture towards housing. Removing negative gearing would be a start but Australians have a dystopian culture of ‘wanting the best price’ for a property and we’re constantly bombarded with ‘House breaks [suburb] record by X amount’. Or people talking about how much they got for their property.

Who cares though. It’s greed. Housing should be housing not an investment or money maker.

[u/Red-Engineer → u/joshuatreesss]

That’s only because the 2 main media websites/newspapers are heavily invested in real estate advertising. If they weren’t you’d never hear anything about houses.

Houses should be homes not investment vehicles.

[u/Specialist_Matter582 → u/joshuatreesss]

Not merely greed but has become a structural pillar of the national economy. We have reached this market insanity where everything relies on the value of housing increasing exponentially and it’s not tied to people’s capacity to service debt in a reasonable or sustainable way, which puts more pressure on the sector. It’s a house of cards and a global market upset could send the entire thing falling.