If we truly didn't have enough housing stock, compared to, say 30 years ago, then either there’d be a lot more homeless people, or the average number of people living under the same roof would be much higher, and I’m reasonably sure that neither is the case. Now accepted, as long as our population is growing, there will always be a need for more housing, but the high barrier to home-ownership entry that we have now logically must, to a significant extent, be due to the fact that of the existing housing stock, a considerable portion of it is owned by investors, who can demand much higher prices than young families hoping to buy their own homes. I also suspect that negative gearing reduces the incentive for investors to find renters, increasing the percentage of unoccupied investment property.

Now it's hard to see how much could be done to reverse this scenario significantly without creating a lot of losers (i.e. the investors), but at least we could ensure it doesn't get any worse, and aim for a gradual re-balancing of ownership between owner-occupiers and investors.

I'm curious...what have you read suggesting that higher density living is less sustainable? Sure, there have been studies showing that per-capita carbon footprints of those living inner-city are often higher than those living in outer suburbia, but that's far more to do with affluence and tendency to purchase more consumer goods, engage in discretionary travel etc. than anything intrinsic about housing density. The outer suburbia we have today is far from sustainable - families of 2, 3 or 4 living in oversized, poorly built and insulated single-standing residences that require huge energy usage to heat and cool, and who travel over 50km every day just to get to work and back (not mention other trips to shops and schools etc.). Sure, if we all drove electric cars, and all electricity came from clean sources, it probably would be sustainable, but that's 40 years off at least, and it's clearly not how most people want to live, or the property prices would reflect that.

(tbc…)

OTOH, very few people want to live in pokey units or huge apartment buildings - my preference would be to encourage the development of new urban medium-density (e.g. duplexes, terrace housing) mixed residential/commercial zones, which have proven to be a popular, affordable and reasonably sustainable way of living for centuries (e.g. most Europe cities), as well as a very successful recipe for generating and maintaining prosperity. Disused or dying industrial zones might prove feasible locations for such projects.

11 years ago was 1996, one year before Kyoto, and 15 years after the first climate models were predicting significant temperature increases. The science hasn't changed that much since then (and I've been following it pretty closely). Stating that the "real problem" is "somebody else" is of course what everyone does. For a start, India's emissions are only twice ours, despite having nearly 50 times the population. And Australia is in a far better position to reduce our emissions than India - cutting our emissions in half, for instance, would give India the flexibility to grow its emissions as much as 25% (temporarily of course) with no global increase.

Anyway, I guess we're drifting quite off-topic now: and while the debate has been interesting it would be good to have more participants with different perspectives (OLO’s site design and posting restrictions are a big part of the problem).

My general conclusion is that neoliberal ideology has a lot to answer for, and while large sectors of the population are already beginning to pay the price, it will get a lot worse before it gets better. Private enterprise and market economies are a vital part of maintaining prosperity and standards of living, and there’s no reason they shouldn’t stay that way, but it’s essential we accept that markets do fail, and do have limitations, and that informed leadership, forward-thinking and decision making not motivated by short-term gains will be what ensures that our prosperity is maintained and enjoyed by all.

I can’t see how more housing relative to demand, would not reduce prices.
The problem is the price of land. Nobody is going to build, if blocks are
too expensive and they are too expensive. I’m told that US houses are
cheaper, as there is less regulation when it comes to land release.
There is a fine balance between the two. If its cheaper to build
people will, as long as land is available. If housing prices would
go down, less would be built, unless the price of land went down.
So the price and availability of land are the key to the debate.

Have you ever been in a large city when the power cuts out?
Everything stops, elevators, sewerage, you name it. Cities are
totally dependant on everything being trucked in.

Compare that to an eco house in what you call urban sprawl,
it could be what used to be called a village. Add a bit of permaculture
to the grey water, some of those guys can just about sustain themselves
off their little patch of dirt. If houses are built right, facing North etc,
hardly any heating or cooling is required. In a village environment
people can cycle to work, shopping and school. Traffic is not
congested, like in cities.

People only travel 50km to work, as fuel is so cheap. If it cost
more they would think twice about where they worked and lived.

BTW, American venture capital thinks they might have cracked
the solar energy solution, using Australian technology.

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2007/s2047734.htm

11 years ago, in 1996, we had 880 million less people on
the planet. Australia uses huge energy so that others might
consume, like aluminium smelters for instance. We could
move them to India or China, then pat ourselves on the back
about our great emission figures. Why would that make
any sense? Why does it make no sense to address the
880 million extra people? With one new coal power station every 10 days
in China being built, there are indeed good reasons to say that what we do
here, does not matter .

Well I’m not sure I’d wanting to be looking to the US for solutions to housing affordability, given the recent real estate crash, and the levels that suburban sprawl has grown to there. If you release large amounts of land 40 or 50km from employment centres, then there will always be a percentage of the population who find the temptation of cheap land prices irresistible, and somehow think they can manage the long commutes and the costs of fuel/car maintenance etc. But what you do think happens to those people once the eventual build up of traffic means that commutes chew up 3 hours of every working day, and petrol price spikes mean their entire disposable income is wiped out by the cost of car dependency?
Your idea of village-style living is all very nice, but that’s not what outer suburbs are, by a long short. Perhaps you’ve never driven through such suburbs, but it’s not hard to drive for 20 minutes without seeing a single shop, let alone larger commercial or industrial zones that could provide significant levels of employment. And susceptibility to blackouts and energy shortages is not the same as unsustainability – however of course a decentralized grid based on multiple renewable sources will help with both.

Regarding aluminium smelters and the like – I completely agree that government policy that encourages such polluters to move to China would be entirely counter-productive. But the solution to this isn’t to recoil from introducing an emissions taxation scheme, rather to ensure that the government works closely with such industries to ensure that they can remain competitive here, given Chinese smelters exist that aren’t subject to the same levels of regulation. And if that means the occasional “special allowance”, then so be it.

Wiz, what the US shows is that land is the problem and if cheap
land is available, then housing is affordable. The present drama
in the US has little to do with that, but with agents flogging
loans to people who could not afford them. Those loans were
repacked by investment banks and flogged off as AAA, the suckers
that bought them have lost big time, mainly overseas insitutions.
Now nobody trusts nobody, thats the real problem.

If you are travelling 20 minutes without seeing a shop, thats all
due to Govt planning. They establish the zones. I live near a
regional town of about 5000 people. Virtually everbody works within
that town, doctors, nurses, teachers, you name it. A few medium
industries employ others. There is hardly a service that is not
available, within walking or cycling distance of the town centre
and houses around it. Sustainability is about the total ecological
footprint of a community. Communities like that would have a far
lower one, then high density areas, also less dependant on the
outside world for everything, as cities are. Suburbia in a similar
structure would work fine. But suburban planners havent set it
up that way.

The 80 million per year or 880 million extra people per year over
11 years, is something that many avoid commenting on. But its
a fundamental and huge problem and has to be addressed, or its
fairly pointless me worrying about what kind of light bulbs I use,
as anything more then a feelgood exercise.

No disagreement that many of the ills of outer suburbia today are due to poor government planning - but again, the solution to poor planning is good planning, not no planning. Again, look at many European cities. In some cases that may mean re-examining or loosening current zoning regulations or building-height restrictions, in others it may mean strengthening existing regulations, and being less beholden to commercial interests when planning infrastructure (More than one commentator has argued that the Victorian State Government's love-affair with PPPs and privatisation is preventing sensible infrastructure decisions that would lead to a more sustainable and livable city).

Regional towns definitely can be a helpful model for what suburbia might look like, but I wouldn't be so sure that such towns are as self-sufficient as you believe - for a start, regional areas are often "propped up" economically to a certain extent by larger cities that generate the bulk of the country's economic wealth, and were an energy crunch to cause rapid economic downturn in the cities, it would very quickly be felt outside them. (If you don't believe this, name me one economically prosperous large rural area anywhere in the world!).

OTOH, current policies that encourage immigrants to move to regional towns could potentially be helpful at abating urban sprawl and relieving housing affordability, especially if a regional town can gain sufficient economic self-sustainability to be a major source of wealth generation in its own right - but it's not clear which (if any) Australian regional towns are realistically placed to undergo such a boom currently.

Yabby, your belief that nothing you can do personally will help reduce global emissions is exactly why emissions aren't being reduced: because everyone thinks the same thing! My suggestion is to find ways of reducing emissions that have other benefits: e.g. set yourself the challenge of reducing your annual electricity bill by $100. It may not be much, but if you're anything like me, you might be quite surprised at the sense of achievement you get from succeeding.