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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-29/census-finds-1-million-empty-houses-amid-affordability-crisis/101190794>
'An "enormous chunk" of Australia's housing stock is unoccupied, and "something
must be done" about it, a demographer says.
According to figures from the 2021 census, one million Australian homes — 10
per cent of the housing stock — were unoccupied on census night last August.
There could be a number of reasons for that — a resident could be staying at a
partner's place that night or the house could be a holiday home or a vacant
investment property.
But the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) "takes quite a substantial range
of methods to ensure that it calculates the usual residents of an area", ANU
demographer Liz Allen says, "so we can say with great confidence that the
unoccupied dwellings are in fact largely potentially an option for housing for
people who are in need of secure housing".
"The fact that people are not living in these homes is an enormous oversight
from a policy perspective, particularly when housing affordability and
homelessness is such an issue in Australia," she said.
In 2016, the number of unoccupied dwellings was about the same but accounted
for 11 per cent of the housing stock.'
Via Dashboard Vogon, who wrote "Singapore solved their #housing problem with a
massive #social-housing program. Nordic countries are doing something similar.
Meanwhile, in #Australia, we march to the tune of #US #imperialism and allow
people to sleep in the streets rather than provide basic human needs. One
exception I take with this article is the reference to #working people being
#homeless. Yes it’s worse when #employed #labour can’t even put a roof over
their heads but it’s also a hint at the undeserving #poor. This has permeated
#Australian media and culture ever since John Howard stupidly followed the lead
of trickle down. We know it doesn’t. It was never going to. Now entire
generations of people will not own their own homes unless we regulate this
#vulture-capitalism. And even poor people deserve housing."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
