00:02Australia is looking to build a lot of affordable housing over the next few years, 30,000 of
00:07these affordable rental homes by the end of 2029, and governments can't do this alone.
00:13So they're rewriting planning rules, pumping billions of dollars into the property development
00:19sector and the community housing sector to get the industry to build these properties.
00:24Part of that is loosening planning restrictions to allow developers in some cities to build
00:29above local height restrictions. In New South Wales, developers can build 30% above height
00:36and density restrictions in return for delivering 15% affordable housing. Now, a lot of this housing
00:42is going up in wealthy areas. There's one we're looking at in Potts Point in Sydney, where the
00:47developers stand to make a massive windfall as a result of this. So the question is, if they are
00:53putting aside affordable housing, how sustainable is it and how affordable is it? And that's a key
00:59question that we've dug into. And it appears in many cases, the affordable housing that's on the
01:04market now isn't actually affordable for some of the people who need it most.
01:07Yeah. So what did you find in this investigation about just how affordable these homes are?
01:12Yeah. So we looked at about two months worth of rental listings for affordable homes. And we found
01:18that in many cases, particularly in Sydney, in Melbourne, a lot of them just weren't affordable for
01:23people on low incomes, particularly single people and single parents. And so there is a real question
01:30here about the pricing models. In New South Wales, the New South Wales government says that it's reviewing
01:35its guidelines around affordable housing, because you often have a situation where
01:40how affordable housing is defined is a discount to the market rate. It's usually sort of a 20-25%
01:47discount to the market rate. And if you've got a housing market that's sort of rising,
01:52constantly rising and is unaffordable for people, there is a question about the logic
01:56of pegging affordable rates to market rates when you've got market rates continually increasing
02:01and potentially putting people in these affordable rentals into housing stress as a result.
02:06Mm-hmm. So, I mean, a review of the guidelines is a start, but what could fix this?
02:11So we've spoken to a number of experts, including the head of the government's affordability
02:15and supply council for housing, Susan Lloyd Hurwitz, and she's really called for affordable housing
02:22to be made permanent, but also she's raised this question of affordability. If you're pegging
02:30affordable rents to market rates, there is an issue there. So she's raised the prospect of changing
02:35that formulation. Governments seem to be open to this idea, but we're pretty far down the road now,
02:41and there is a lot of developers getting involved in this now. So if there is going to be a
02:45change
02:45to the model, governments can probably expect pushback from industry who are building these
02:51projects on the condition that they're feasible, and there'll be a question for them about whether
02:54changing the model keeps these projects feasible for them.
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