00:00The group calling themselves YIMBYs, that stands for Yes In My Backyard, has come up
00:07with some pretty interesting housing research.
00:10The number of urban and town planners has increased ninefold in 40 years, much more
00:15than the increase in house prices that have led to the affordability crisis.
00:20But it's not resulting in more houses, quite the opposite.
00:23The number of dwellings per planner used to be 50 per year.
00:28Now it's less than nine.
00:31YIMBYs are a global political movement of young people that started 10 years ago in San Francisco
00:37to oppose the mostly old NIMBYs trying to stop new housing developments in their suburbs.
00:43In Australia, a group emulating them started up in Canberra four years ago, and then more
00:47sprung up in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
00:51Recently they joined forces to form the Abundant Housing Network.
00:54Anyway, they're campaigners, so they're biased.
00:58But this research is based on ABS statistics.
01:01Also the explosion in the number of planners is not the planners fault.
01:04It's the fault of governments.
01:07They have loaded the business of building houses with more and more regulations and complications.
01:14Planners are employed by councils and governments to make building houses more difficult.
01:19And developers employ them to navigate those regulations and deal with the other planners.
01:25So the time it takes to get developments approved, as all the planners grapple with each other,
01:29has also exploded.
01:31And the more planners there are, the fewer houses get built.
01:35That's not because there are more planners, but because it shows how many regulations there
01:39are slowing developers down.
01:42And finally, let's compare the number of planners with the number of building workers per house.
01:48We knew already that construction productivity had halved, and there's been a lot of furrowed
01:52brows and learned reports about how to fix that.
01:55But planner productivity is far worse.
01:59And the only way to fix that is to deregulate.
02:02Thank you!
02:03It's a good idea.
02:04Thank you!
02:07Thanks!
02:08You're welcome!
02:16I'm glad you're here.
02:24How are you doing?
02:26I'm glad you're here!
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