BTR Series Part 1: The Housing Crisis – A Big Problem In Search Of A Solution

The housing crisis in Australia has been brewing for more than a generation.

The symptoms are painful and obvious and include:

• The gap between supply (with supply-side problems) and increasing demand;
• Affordability slipping further out of the reach of younger Australians with high house prices, interest rates and inflation outstripping wage growth; and
• Growing rental market pressures with record rent escalations.

Something has to give.

WHY ARE WE HERE?

There are many causes. Perhaps chief among them has been the lack of a coherent political policy aimed at resolving the multifaceted housing crisis - a complex and sensitive problem but a socially critical one to fix. In the absence of considered, integrated and well-administered government policy, the problem continues to grow.