I’ve been researching housing for 15
years and I’m here to tell you that the
solutions to the housing problem are
really simple I love a good reality
renovation show how to turn dumps into
dollars through smart design and great
it’s been called property porn the crack
cocaine of reality TV but our addiction
to property speculation as entertainment
has crossed too far into real life the
housing market has come a competitive
sport where the winners make the most
money and the losers a first home buyers
and low-income renters we need to think
about housing not as investing in real
estate but as investing in community the
good news is there are ways to redesign
our deeply unequal housing system but
first we need to know how we got to this
point homes have always been the most
expensive item on our household budget
and for those of us who own one our most
valuable asset the rich have always been
able to buy what they like but one of
the great success stories of the 20th
century was to even things up through
decent housing for the poor and by
making home ownership possible for
working Australians in the first 20
years after World War two we nearly
doubled our housing stock and built more
than 100,000 public housing units by the
mid sixties 71 percent of Australians
owned their own home supported by a
flexible private rental market and a
public rental safety net
you’d start on the housing ladder by
renting maybe sharing when you left home
and buy your first house when you were
ready to settle down it was a reasonable
expectation that families on ordinary
income could save for a home deposit
within a couple of years so that by the
time they retired the loan was paid off
and financial security guaranteed things
began to change in the 1980s economic
growth dual income households
financial deregulation which loosened up
lending and later lower interest rates
all increase the amount of money people
could borrow and pay for housing tax
tricks like negative gearing created a
new type of investor the mum and dad
landlord able to out be it first home
buyers from the market and by the turn
of the new millennium house prices were
rising much faster than incomes the
politicians solution was to release more
land for housing by up zoning near
railway lines in the urban fringe and
calling for more houses and apartments
to be built the story was that more new
homes would make renting and buying
affordable once again but that didn’t
happen because the government had
defunded public housing turning to the
private sector to increase housing
supply total public sector involvement
in new house building fell from 12
percent in the mid 80s to 2 percent
today and although we’ve built more
homes than ever in the past five years
fueled by the latest housing boom prices
have continued to rise well beyond what
most first home buyers can afford so we
have a generation increasingly stuck in
insecure rental tenure we have more new
houses but homeownership rates have
fallen permanent homes are converted to
Airbnb style holiday rentals
housing tourists while local teachers
and nurses are forced to the urban
fringe at the very bottom of the market
low-income workers and students crowd in
substandard and precarious share
accommodation the total value of
Australia’s housing stock grew to six
point eight trillion dollars in 2017
four times GDP
Sydney’s homeless population
to buy nearly 50% in half a decade the
profit to be made in residential real
estate has blinded us to the true value
of home and a community where everyone
has a decent place to live
Australia has been infected by a global
contagion known as the financialization
of housing the more money to be made on
housing the more we’ve wanted to invest
and the more dependent on property
wealth we’ve become with houses
converted to money making assets access
to home has become deeply unequal and I
have an idea for a reality TV show to
fix that it won’t be a show about
photogenic couples failing the market
it will show us how to redesign our
housing system to better meet the needs
of the 1.3 million Australians who are
currently missing out well do it in
three episodes first we’ll fix public
housing which has been stigmatized by 30
years of disinvestment and neglect the
idealism of the post-war years that
pedestrian-oriented estates in the outer
suburbs the modern high-rise towers in
the city was matched by a belief that
public housing could be a genuine
stepping stone or even alternative to
ownership this was a time when public
housing was as essential to the city and
to city building as public architecture
this is the serious building one of
Sydney’s great modernist icons right on
Sydney Harbour and built for public
housing but this idealism was lost in
the 90s when governments began to turn
to the
market for affordable housing and social
housing became the tenure of last resort
in other countries government’s use the
market to cross subsidized housing for
lower-income people in Hong Kong nearly
50% of all new homes of public rental
housing or affordable home ownership
financed through development on public
land in the UK public grant and planning
requirements mean that nearly 30 percent
of all new homes are affordable but in
Australia social housing is woefully
underfunded new initiatives aimed to
attract private investment into
affordable housing projects but without
proper public investment these projects
will not get off the ground so in
episode one rather than turn our remnant
public housing into real estate we
revive and extend social housing as part
of purpose-built mixed income rental
communities providing secure leases to
people across the income spectrum this
would be a genuine alternative to
ownership beyond the current private
rental treadmill but even if we fix
renting many Australians will still want
to own our research at the University of
Sydney shows that our key workers our
teachers nurses police will travel more
than 100 kilometres from city jobs in
order to buy a home of their own so in
episode 2 we increase the supply of
homes that these essential workers can
afford this is where urban planning
comes in well planned and designed
communities are valued highly by the
market and in Sydney as in other major
cities these high market prices now
exclude first homebuyers on average
incomes inclusionary planning fixes this
by preserving affordability
the idea is simple when land is rezone
door we invest in new infrastructure
like a new rail line land values rise
benefitting owners but not renters
inclusionary planning fixes this by
coring back from some of this benefit
for the local community requiring
affordable homes to be included as part
of future development the homes are
dedicated or sold at discount prices to
lower income first home buyers or to
social housing associations so the
builders are paid for the housing and
the land costs absorbed as part of the
larger development this idea of
inclusionary planning is standard in
cities throughout the world in London
New York San Francisco but so far aside
from small pilot schemes Adelaide in
South Australia is the only city to
properly do it here
go Adelaide we can also help people do
it for themselves the old-school housing
co-op has been reimagined as new
generation co living projects which
completely bypass the commercial
development process groups of
like-minded people design and commission
their homes collectively saving the
developers premium from the project cost
take fibre toon Amsterdam one of my
favorite examples the 52 apartments in
this project were designed and
commissioned by their owners who not
only built wonderful homes at a lower
cost but also created a thriving
community but fixing the housing problem
is not just about building lower cost
rental housing or helping first
homebuyers into ownership as important
as those things are we need to
fundamentally rethink where and how we
accommodate our growing population
that’s episode 3
Australia is one of the most urbanized
nations in the world with 40% of our
population living in Sydney and
Melbourne alone and rising
we can’t keep squeezing this growth into
towers above railway stations and the
ever spreading urban fringe wreath
expanding the geography of Housing
Opportunity in Australia must be the
long-term plan we can already say urban
refugees bringing creativity and
entrepreneurial ISM to regional towns
like beechworth in Victoria and
Bellingen in northern New South Wales
and revitalizing former industrial
cities like too long and Newcastle these
efforts need support through quality
transportation and telecommunications
through decent hospitals education
research arts facilities the ingredients
Australia is dividing into a nation of
those with housing wealth and those
without from a country where achieving
the dream of homeownership was possible
from most Australians to a society
obsessed with property speculation as
competitive sport but it’s not too late
to change our path the solutions already
exist
rebuilding social housing as part of
mixed income rental communities
affordable home ownership or regional
Renaissance but to realise their
solutions we need to recalibrate our
thinking about housing rather than
potential profit we need to revalue
homes for their purpose as a place to
live
thank you [Applause]
years and I’m here to tell you that the
solutions to the housing problem are
really simple I love a good reality
renovation show how to turn dumps into
dollars through smart design and great
it’s been called property porn the crack
cocaine of reality TV but our addiction
to property speculation as entertainment
has crossed too far into real life the
housing market has come a competitive
sport where the winners make the most
money and the losers a first home buyers
and low-income renters we need to think
about housing not as investing in real
estate but as investing in community the
good news is there are ways to redesign
our deeply unequal housing system but
first we need to know how we got to this
point homes have always been the most
expensive item on our household budget
and for those of us who own one our most
valuable asset the rich have always been
able to buy what they like but one of
the great success stories of the 20th
century was to even things up through
decent housing for the poor and by
making home ownership possible for
working Australians in the first 20
years after World War two we nearly
doubled our housing stock and built more
than 100,000 public housing units by the
mid sixties 71 percent of Australians
owned their own home supported by a
flexible private rental market and a
public rental safety net
you’d start on the housing ladder by
renting maybe sharing when you left home
and buy your first house when you were
ready to settle down it was a reasonable
expectation that families on ordinary
income could save for a home deposit
within a couple of years so that by the
time they retired the loan was paid off
and financial security guaranteed things
began to change in the 1980s economic
growth dual income households
financial deregulation which loosened up
lending and later lower interest rates
all increase the amount of money people
could borrow and pay for housing tax
tricks like negative gearing created a
new type of investor the mum and dad
landlord able to out be it first home
buyers from the market and by the turn
of the new millennium house prices were
rising much faster than incomes the
politicians solution was to release more
land for housing by up zoning near
railway lines in the urban fringe and
calling for more houses and apartments
to be built the story was that more new
homes would make renting and buying
affordable once again but that didn’t
happen because the government had
defunded public housing turning to the
private sector to increase housing
supply total public sector involvement
in new house building fell from 12
percent in the mid 80s to 2 percent
today and although we’ve built more
homes than ever in the past five years
fueled by the latest housing boom prices
have continued to rise well beyond what
most first home buyers can afford so we
have a generation increasingly stuck in
insecure rental tenure we have more new
houses but homeownership rates have
fallen permanent homes are converted to
Airbnb style holiday rentals
housing tourists while local teachers
and nurses are forced to the urban
fringe at the very bottom of the market
low-income workers and students crowd in
substandard and precarious share
accommodation the total value of
Australia’s housing stock grew to six
point eight trillion dollars in 2017
four times GDP
Sydney’s homeless population
to buy nearly 50% in half a decade the
profit to be made in residential real
estate has blinded us to the true value
of home and a community where everyone
has a decent place to live
Australia has been infected by a global
contagion known as the financialization
of housing the more money to be made on
housing the more we’ve wanted to invest
and the more dependent on property
wealth we’ve become with houses
converted to money making assets access
to home has become deeply unequal and I
have an idea for a reality TV show to
fix that it won’t be a show about
photogenic couples failing the market
it will show us how to redesign our
housing system to better meet the needs
of the 1.3 million Australians who are
currently missing out well do it in
three episodes first we’ll fix public
housing which has been stigmatized by 30
years of disinvestment and neglect the
idealism of the post-war years that
pedestrian-oriented estates in the outer
suburbs the modern high-rise towers in
the city was matched by a belief that
public housing could be a genuine
stepping stone or even alternative to
ownership this was a time when public
housing was as essential to the city and
to city building as public architecture
this is the serious building one of
Sydney’s great modernist icons right on
Sydney Harbour and built for public
housing but this idealism was lost in
the 90s when governments began to turn
to the
market for affordable housing and social
housing became the tenure of last resort
in other countries government’s use the
market to cross subsidized housing for
lower-income people in Hong Kong nearly
50% of all new homes of public rental
housing or affordable home ownership
financed through development on public
land in the UK public grant and planning
requirements mean that nearly 30 percent
of all new homes are affordable but in
Australia social housing is woefully
underfunded new initiatives aimed to
attract private investment into
affordable housing projects but without
proper public investment these projects
will not get off the ground so in
episode one rather than turn our remnant
public housing into real estate we
revive and extend social housing as part
of purpose-built mixed income rental
communities providing secure leases to
people across the income spectrum this
would be a genuine alternative to
ownership beyond the current private
rental treadmill but even if we fix
renting many Australians will still want
to own our research at the University of
Sydney shows that our key workers our
teachers nurses police will travel more
than 100 kilometres from city jobs in
order to buy a home of their own so in
episode 2 we increase the supply of
homes that these essential workers can
afford this is where urban planning
comes in well planned and designed
communities are valued highly by the
market and in Sydney as in other major
cities these high market prices now
exclude first homebuyers on average
incomes inclusionary planning fixes this
by preserving affordability
the idea is simple when land is rezone
door we invest in new infrastructure
like a new rail line land values rise
benefitting owners but not renters
inclusionary planning fixes this by
coring back from some of this benefit
for the local community requiring
affordable homes to be included as part
of future development the homes are
dedicated or sold at discount prices to
lower income first home buyers or to
social housing associations so the
builders are paid for the housing and
the land costs absorbed as part of the
larger development this idea of
inclusionary planning is standard in
cities throughout the world in London
New York San Francisco but so far aside
from small pilot schemes Adelaide in
South Australia is the only city to
properly do it here
go Adelaide we can also help people do
it for themselves the old-school housing
co-op has been reimagined as new
generation co living projects which
completely bypass the commercial
development process groups of
like-minded people design and commission
their homes collectively saving the
developers premium from the project cost
take fibre toon Amsterdam one of my
favorite examples the 52 apartments in
this project were designed and
commissioned by their owners who not
only built wonderful homes at a lower
cost but also created a thriving
community but fixing the housing problem
is not just about building lower cost
rental housing or helping first
homebuyers into ownership as important
as those things are we need to
fundamentally rethink where and how we
accommodate our growing population
that’s episode 3
Australia is one of the most urbanized
nations in the world with 40% of our
population living in Sydney and
Melbourne alone and rising
we can’t keep squeezing this growth into
towers above railway stations and the
ever spreading urban fringe wreath
expanding the geography of Housing
Opportunity in Australia must be the
long-term plan we can already say urban
refugees bringing creativity and
entrepreneurial ISM to regional towns
like beechworth in Victoria and
Bellingen in northern New South Wales
and revitalizing former industrial
cities like too long and Newcastle these
efforts need support through quality
transportation and telecommunications
through decent hospitals education
research arts facilities the ingredients
Australia is dividing into a nation of
those with housing wealth and those
without from a country where achieving
the dream of homeownership was possible
from most Australians to a society
obsessed with property speculation as
competitive sport but it’s not too late
to change our path the solutions already
exist
rebuilding social housing as part of
mixed income rental communities
affordable home ownership or regional
Renaissance but to realise their
solutions we need to recalibrate our
thinking about housing rather than
potential profit we need to revalue
homes for their purpose as a place to
live
thank you [Applause]
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