Australian’s are being sold a lie, and they are either among those who see this, or among those who are emotionally unwilling to recognize it, or they are among those who are benefitting from it and hope that others will not recognize it. And that lie is the idea that we are just not building enough homes. You will hear often in news media, in articles and online and in personal conversations that the solution to solving the housing crisis is very easy, just build more homes. I have heard this said so many times over the years, that I have lost count. And that’s just in the last month. I don’t even watch the news, but I see the titles of news articles online, and it is a common theme.
Anecdotally,
I know this is a nonsense statement because the area I live in is becoming
quickly overpopulated and over-saturated by the amount of housing developments going
up, and they keep increasing, not decreasing. The amount of homes being built
is incredible. So too is the incredibly disturbing density of the housing
estates these homes are being built into, it is really quite remarkable that
people are willing to both pay for and live in such shoe box style living. But
then in other countries people live in apartment complexes in large numbers,
don’t they? I know from people in the building community that this building is
happening all over the country. Australia is building homes at an incredible
rate. But these are just anecdotes, you want hard data, don’t you?
Well Leith
Van Onselen from Macrobusiness has the numbers.
“Australia is a world leader in home construction
The OECD’s Affordable Housing Database shows that Australia
has built significantly more dwellings per capita than most other OECD
countries:
In 2020, Australia
ranked fourth in the OECD for home building.
Australia’s residential construction rate also remained
constant from 2011.
The primary issue is not Australia’s inability to build
houses, but rather the fact that Australia has one of the world’s largest immigration
programs, ensuring that housing demand always exceeds supply.
In the 20 years leading up to 2001, Australia’s net overseas
migration (NOM) averaged 95,000 persons per year, while population growth
averaged 217,000.
Australia’s NOM averaged 182,000 in the 20 years to 2021, and
population growth averaged 320,000 people a year. And this time span
encompasses the pandemic’s negative NOM.”[i]
Australia is
one of the world leaders in house building. Behind only Korea, Iceland and Türkiye.[ii]
The idea that we just need to build more homes is a misnomer, and actually a
bit cruel, considering the fact that high interest rates has caused many
indebted builders to go under at a very high rate, something that Onselen also
notes. Australia’s problem is not that its building industry is not capable of
producing high numbers of homes, it is that no matter how many they build, the
government just keeps increasing immigration, to now never seen before figures,
“According to the Budget, NOM will hit a record high 400,000 in 2022-23,
before decreasing to 315,000 in 2023-24.”[iii]
Australia’s
housing market is being set up to fail, for young homebuyers. It is an asset
owners market, and many of those in power who make the decisions are asset
owners. One of the most consistent ways to make money in the last four decades
in Australia, has been from an increasingly booming housing market. This is true
to some degree in other countries, but even more so in Australia, with its low
population, and lower selection of markets for the wealthy to invest their
money in. Land ownership and specifically investment home ownership has been a
primary means for the wealthy to get richer, and everyone else to get poorer.
This is a problem for the economy, because this land is not increasing
in value from production, but simply from a supply side issue that has been
manufactured by immigration. It is an artificial growth curve, based on the
assumption that Australians will just tolerate paying more and more for homes,
indefinitely, which so far has turned out to be true. It is an immigration Ponzi
scheme, and every Australian and every new immigrant is forced to pay more and
more for a home to live in. When will this cycle stop?
But only
racists oppose immigration, right? You have probably heard this statement at some
point. It's a facile fallback accusation of the person who has no argument, but
has a "sense" about what they feel should be the right position. It
would be a funny, if it was not such a tragic and evil position.
I was out
evangelizing with some people from my church on Sunday, and we took food, and
blankets and other things to donate to homeless people, and one of the families
we encountered living on the streets was an immigrant family. They can't get a
rental. They can't get a home for their kids.
So, tell me
how exactly it is kind or moral, to drive immigration to the highest levels
this country has ever seen, when both Australians and resident foreigners are living in
their cars, tents, vans and under bridges from this manufactured crisis? I was
shocked at the amount of people I observed. I have never seen such conditions
in this country before. And I grew up in a relatively poor neighbourhood. But
even the poorest people I knew had a home. It might not have been a flash one,
but it was a home.
It is evil for a government that is not correctly serving its own people, to bring in more people, to compete with its own people who are starting to drown under the pressures of the cost of living. Especially when it is very easy for them to solve it. Only one policy needs to change. All that needs to happen is that the tap of immigration is turned down, to allow for infrastructure and housing pressures to ease. Remove the high demand on homes and prices will fall. Maybe not straight away, but eventually.
But this
will not happen, because the housing crisis is being manufactured. There are
over 1 million empty homes in Australia and as you saw, Australia builds homes
at a rate higher than any developed country, bar three. The fact that we are
just not building enough is a lie, it is a cruel lie. Immigration is being used
to keep constant upward pressure on house prices, and downward pressure on
wages.
“Australia’s housing shortage is a direct outcome of two
decades of excessive immigration, which is officially projected to reach record
highs in coming years.”[iv]
No matter
how much we build, the government just increases how many people come in. The
housing crisis is being manufactured, to turn our homes into a bumper market
for wealthy landowners, big developers, and politicians with investments. Your
ability to buy a home is being taken from you quite deliberately, so the rich
can get richer, and you are "racist" if you call them out.
I wonder how
much of this Australians will take before they march in the streets? They are
already starting to build homes from tents and campervans in the parks of many
communities. How long until people have had enough? Those in charge can change
this very easily, the mechanism is within their reach; just drastically lower
the pressure on rentals and house prices by allowing less people to come into
the country. Of course, as Van Onselen notes, if the government really cared
about the issue of homelessness and the housing crisis they would do something
about the large numbers of immigration. The fact that they are doing the opposite,
kind of indicates how little they really care about the average Aussie.
References
[i] Leith Van Onselen, Australia Confronts Permanent Housing Shortage, 2023, https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2023/06/australia-confronts-permanent-housing-shortage/
[ii]
The articles spelling, not mine.
[iii] Leith Van Onselen, Australia Confronts Permanent Housing Shortage, 2023,https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2023/06/australia-confronts-permanent-housing-shortage/
[iv] Leith Van Onselen, Australia Confronts Permanent Housing Shortage, 2023, https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2023/06/australia-confronts-permanent-housing-shortage/
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