00:00In the midst of a housing crisis, Australia has millions of empty bedrooms.
00:06On the surface, it seems like a potential solution.
00:10Five of those bedrooms are in Tony and Julie Papineau's home, which shows reality isn't
00:14that simple.
00:15They've lived here about 20 minutes from the Perth CBD for the last four decades, but now
00:22it's too big.
00:23This is one of our guest rooms as well, and I've turned it into my drum room because that's
00:29my hobby.
00:30The problem is getting people like us out of here.
00:34Where do we go?
00:35We haven't got anywhere that compares, you know, this location is fantastic.
00:40Across the nation, Winthrop is one of the suburbs with the most spare capacity.
00:44In other words, homes that are too big.
00:47About 54% of WA's homes have more than one spare room.
00:51Queensland comes in next at 48%.
00:54Across the country, the average is 45%, equating to about 5 million spare rooms.
01:01But there are only 300,000 households who say they need more space.
01:06What we need is an approach, a strategic approach, where there's some large scale redevelopment
01:11where you can create precincts with good amenities that can cater for the increase in traffic.
01:17That's tricky enough in an established suburb, and even harder right now.
01:22Many apartment projects just aren't feasible due to rising construction costs and skill
01:27shortages.
01:28The lesson is to deliver more housing choice.
01:31We need a much greater diversity of housing types.
01:36We need three bedroom houses, we need townhouses, terrace houses, as well as your apartments,
01:41both low and high rise.
01:43In the meantime, Tony and Julie will keep waiting for a home closer to their needs.
01:48I enjoy my drums here.
01:49I've got an electronic kit, I've got an acoustic kit.
01:52We've made use of the rooms, but in a different way.
01:56As governments try to one-pick decades of development, which has left Australia with
02:00too many spare rooms.
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