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On our moral watch

The disgrace of homelessness in Australia
by
September 2024, no. 468

On our moral watch

The disgrace of homelessness in Australia
by
September 2024, no. 468

Australia is experiencing a housing disaster that risks turning into a social and economic catastrophe. It is a disaster because all four aspects of the system are extremely stressed and play havoc with the lives and aspirations of millions of people. Home ownership is beyond the reach of many households, even those with two good wages coming in, let alone those with one. Rents have skyrocketed and few affordable rentals are available for ordinary working families. Housing costs are so high as to lower living standards generally. The modern history of social housing is one of deliberate government under-investment, to the point where it is available only to those on income support and with desperate needs. In our land of plenty, homelessness is among the highest in the world and visible to all – a fact reported to our national shame in the international media.

This situation has been chronic and worsening for more than a generation. Without a different approach it will go on for at least another. The Australian housing disaster appears to be maturing into a new normal, which really would be a catastrophe.

This is no spider that has crept up on unsuspecting Australia in the dark. The housing disaster has happened in broad daylight, and it continues to do so predictably and avoidably under our moral watch. Writers such as Jim Kemeny and Peter Mares, as well as the UN Special Rapporteur Miloon Kathari, have sounded strong alarms along the way, complemented recently by the likes of Alan Kohler, Saul Eslake, Jessie Hohmann, and Chris Martin. Speaking as housing historians, finance journalists, taxation economists, and human rights experts, they give voice to a powerful message: the current design of the housing and taxation system puts profit before people and is not fit for its fundamental social purposes.

From the New Issue

Comments (2)

  • The basic human right of access to housing would be a valuable cornerstone idea when promoting and designing taxation to discourage the idea that buying an investment property is a legitimate option for the middle class.

    Traditional finance saw those with property and a little savings lend their cash to the bank who in turn lent it to would-be homeowners. The difference in interest covered the banks costs and perhaps a little profit.

    Today property prices and therefore rents have been supercharged by the exploitation of the basic need for housing as a vulnerability. A weakness from which one can make money.

    Folk habitually think of this in benign terms, because they ground it in a banal notion of a the imagined virtue of the investor wanting to 'get ahead'. It is in fact nothing less than an extortion racket.

    In our unremarkable street in Central Victoria one in three houses are empty. None of these twelve empty houses are accomodation. All are either very rarely used holiday homes or simply left empty for want of the bother of letting them out to a tenant.
    Posted by Patrick Hockey
    05 September 2024
  • The fundamental issue lies in the structure of the economy, which is rooted in capitalism; it poses the question of whether we can reconcile material wealth with spiritual values.
    Posted by Iradj Nabavi-Tabrizi
    02 September 2024

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