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Keywords: Housing

  • AUSTRALIA

    Who benefits from Olympic billions?

    • Sarah Klenbort
    • 07 February 2023
    4 Comments

    As Brisbane prepares to host the 2032 Olympics and Paralympics, housing affordability remains a pressing issue. With more residents now facing homelessness, the question arises: with vast amounts of taxpayer money being spent on Olympics infrastructure, how will Brisbane address the homelessness crisis?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Australian housing crisis: A Roundtable

    • David Halliday, Peter Mares, John Falzon, Nicola Nemaric, Rae Dufty-Jones
    • 18 November 2022
    1 Comment

    Despite rising interest rates and the recent dip in property values, Australia’s housing situation places it among the least affordable property market in the world. With a rise in homelessness and younger Australians locked out of an inflated housing market, what is the way forward for Australia? 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Home sweet home turns sour

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 04 August 2022
    8 Comments

    It is easy to view homelessness from a distance as only a failure of economic policy and of the political responsibility to deliver material goods. A home, however, is more than a house. It connotes connections that are central to humanity. Left without a home people are deprived of more than bricks and mortar; they are diminished in their humanity.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Big ticket promises won't help our hidden millions

    • Claire Victory
    • 19 May 2022
    1 Comment

    There is an Australia that many people seldom encounter and its citizens number in the millions. These citizens live in all cities and regional towns, often in sub-standard yet costly housing, and struggle to survive week to week on low wages or inadequate government assistance.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    After the election

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 May 2022
    2 Comments

    As the election campaign mercifully comes to an end, many of us have been musing on what the new Government should do when it comes into office. It is a difficult question to answer because both Parties have excluded any radical action to address the clear and pressing needs of Australians. Fires, floods and insurance costs highlight the need for immediate and shared action to address climate change. The simultaneous high cost of housing, the inadequate benefits available to the disadvantaged, and lack of accommodation for people in need testify to the need to address the growing inequality in Australian society. 

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  • ECONOMICS

    Out-of-control house prices requires a different approach

    • David James
    • 11 May 2022
    4 Comments

    In purely economic terms, the upcoming Federal election is extremely unusual. The shut down of the Australian economy for almost two years because of health measures really has no precedent in our history. Only war can produce that type of shock. The Federal government’s financial response was as extreme as the state of emergency measures, including a sharp increase in Australian government debt. It remains to be seen, however, if the government gets much credit for injecting so much free money into the economy. It is unlikely.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Best of 2021: Homelessness is caused not by poverty but by wealth

    • John Falzon
    • 04 January 2022
    7 Comments

    When you put rising housing costs alongside stagnating wages, an alarming trend in normalising insecure work, persistent unemployment and underemployment, and statutory incomes that are going backwards in real terms, there’s good reason to be deeply worried about an increase in homelessness.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Homelessness is caused not by poverty but by wealth

    • John Falzon
    • 10 August 2021
    13 Comments

    When you put rising housing costs alongside stagnating wages, an alarming trend in normalising insecure work, persistent unemployment and underemployment, and statutory incomes that are going backwards in real terms, there’s good reason to be deeply worried about an increase in homelessness.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Funding shake-up leaves out key SA homelessness services

    • Michele Madigan
    • 13 May 2021
    9 Comments

    A state government has an obligation to do what is possible within the limits of state resources to help its people, to make the state an inclusive place where all have access to essential services and housing. However, over the last few weeks, with the announcement of the funding restructure for homelessness services, this idea of a fair go seems to have dissipated.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Property has a social license, too

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 25 February 2021
    16 Comments

    Discussion of housing usually focuses exclusively on its relationship to the economy. Housing is seen as property, and the most important questions are seen as having to do with buying and selling. This transactional aspect is important. It needs, however, to be seen in the light of the larger human good. From that perspective housing in all the various forms it takes in different cultures is not a possession but a human need.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Looking back to look forward

    • Dustin Halse
    • 30 July 2020
    4 Comments

    In Australia, we have long boasted of our unparalleled prosperity and strong economic growth. We have championed home ownership and the quarter acre block — after all our home is meant to be our castle. But for too many, the basic human right of having a place to call home remains out of reach.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Responding with compassion

    • Najma Sambul
    • 09 July 2020
    12 Comments

    Donations flooded the centre. Volunteers from across Melbourne arrived ready to support any way they could. Key volunteers came from Carlton and surrounding suburbs, mostly young African people were on the frontlines. They had used social media to reach out to friends, relatives and others locked in the housing estates to ask what they needed and then got to work.

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