The Housing Affordability Crisis Of Auckland Essay

Homelessness is an issue which stems from a large range of external factors which by themselves are difficult to address. One such contemporary factor in NSW regarding homelessness is the affordability of adequate shelter with the Sydney Morning Herald reporting the median price in Sydney to be $1.15 million. This has made it harder for individuals to afford homes which are adequate as per the requirements of article 11

Within the City of Toronto, there is a heavy concentration of social housing, in the form of both houses and buildings, in the space South of St. Clair Avenue, bordered by Jane St. to the West and Woodbine Avenue to the East. Within this space however, rather than being evenly spaced out, social housing developments are clustered within certain neighbourhoods, such as in and around Parkdale and between the neighbourhoods of Moss Park, Regent Park, and the Garden district. Outside of this space, generally speaking, social housing is placed further apart with some exceptional clusters, such as the 18th and (portions of) the 4th community housing units, as well as the Yonge-Eglinton area. In the peripheries of the city, social housing developments are mostly located along major arteries, and there are very few houses, as opposed to buildings.

This policy brief is prepared to give some insights of the housing affordability problem in Australia. In addition, the paper also suggests some approaches in which the Government should consider in tackling the issue in the Australian context. Housing affordability always

Affordable housing: Rental housing or property that costs no more than 30% of one’s income. This is the long-established criterion for housing affordability (Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, 2013).

Affordable housing has become the paramount issue of cities and dense urban areas. San Francisco is the posterchild of an unaffordable city that regardless of immense investment from blue chip firms like Google, Facebook, and their ilk of startups evaluated at $1 billion or more, policymakers and elected officials must wrestle with the housing affordability crisis that is considered endogenous to swaths of homelessness and record statistics on crime. In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio has made affordable housing the centerpiece of his legislation and championed the cause as a social justice issue—neighborhoods must remain affordable to maintain diversity for all races, ethnicities, and low-income families. A small sample of 827 New Yorkers by the NY1-Baruch College City Poll found the main concern of respondents was affordable housing while crime, jobs, and homelessness were peripheral problems (Cuza, 2016). The public discourse on how to address housing across the United States has pointed to negative externalities that surround rent-regulation and homeownership. Conversely, for this essay I will present various cases in order to illustrate the housing crunch is influenced less by housing and land regulations, or antagonistic homeowners but is induced by global market forces.

Canada 's housing market is at an all-time high, they are known in Vancouver for having the most expensive housing market. This expensive market is not just a Vancouver problem, it is an issue growing throughout the nation and is depriving the average citizen to be able to purchase a house in their lifetime. There is a major issue with the state of the market and how it affects the current citizens. Issues have been rising where the average wage in Vancouver is estimated at seventy-one thousand per family household, according to the Vancouver Sun (2014), yet the average costing home as reached between five hundred thousand in the municipality to over one million within Vancouver, according to articles by Beth Lindsay (2015) of the Vancouver Sun, and Troy Landereville (2015) of The Maple Ridge Times.

Housing Affordability in Australia has become the focus point for urban planners in recent years. In particular, South East Queensland (SEQ) has experienced significant pressure as the demand for property and affordable dwellings increases and population growth in the region continues. The issue has come to the forefront in discussions for local governments in the region and there is a real need to address the problem of housing affordability. The subject of affordability is complex and is contributed to by a number of factors including the impost created by Council processes, which is the scope of the HAF-T5 Project.

Affordable housing in the United States describes sheltering units with well-adjusted housing costs for those living on an average, median income. The phrase usually implies to applied rental or purchaser housing within the financial means of lower-income ranges specific to the demographics of any given area. However, affordable housing does not include those living in social housing owned by government and non-profit organizations. More specifically, the targeted range for housing affordability sets below 30 percent of a household's annual income, including all applicable taxes, utility costs and home owners insurance rates. If the mean income per household breaches the 30 percent mark, then the agreed status becomes labeled as

The aim of the City of Sydney Affordable Rental Housing State Environmental Planning Policy Strategy (SEPP) is to protect existing affordable housing and to facilitate ¬¬¬¬¬new affordable housing in the City of Sydney to provide for social, cultural, environmental and economic sustainability. The key of this strategy is to increase the amount of affordable rental housing in the local area to very low, low and moderate income households; protect existing stock of low cost rental accommodation; encourage a diverse range of housing in the local area; and work with other inner Sydney councils to address affordable rental housing at a regional level. According to the SEPP, affordable housing is refers to housing that does not take more than 30% of a very low, low or moderate household’s income. It defines affordable housing as very low income household as

The affordability problem is across all states and largely affects the working wage earners and below.(Housing Needs Assessment, 2015 booklet page 297) This is because throughout the nation there is a large differences between minimum wage, housing wage, and the affordable units available. As noted earlier in the essay, King County is experiencing a huge affordable housing Crisis. The 2015 Housing Needs Assessment indicated that there are only 28 affordable units for every 100 extremely cost burden families. Washington State is short in 166,058 affordable units, 2015. With Seattle economy and populations growing each year these affordable units are necessary to maintain the working class.

The cost of housing is increasing while the amount of income of low-class workers is decreasing. Housing is considered unaffordable when it consumes more than thirty percent of the household income (DiNapoli 4). In 2012, forty-percent of the households that earned less than $40,000 per year spent more than forty to sixty-eight percent of their income on rent (Mathias). Affordable housing has also decreased in a twelve-year period. From 2000 to 2012, approximately 400,000 apartments renting for less than $1000 were lost (DiNapoli 1). In order for a minimum wage worker who earns eight dollars an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment in New York City, at a fair market rent, must work 124 hours per week, 52 weeks per year, which is also disregarding costs for food and health care (Out of Reach

Housing improvement and affordability policy is an ongoing issue that our nation has battled with since desegregation. Affordable housing provision for low-income communities has been researched extensively in the past by nonprofits in Charlottesville , and The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development( HUD). Locally, the Habitat for Humanity store works to ensure this policy issue is properly addressed through making housing improvements as well as building homes for families in need. The Habitat for Humanity Store has worked to make critical home repairs with sponsorship from Home Depot for veterans (Habitat, 2017). There have been other initiatives to address housing improvement needs also. The Charlottesville Redevelopment

Between 1960 and 2006 real house prices increased at an average of 2.7 percent annually, ahead of a 1.9 percent per annum growth in per household real incomes (Yates, 2008). Therefore, over the past half century, there has been an underlying structural affordability problem in Australia due to house price and household income.

Multiple reasons exist for the the lack of affordable housing. On the demand side these include population growth and increased migration to urban areas, easily accessible housing finance, tax incentives and a “strong cultural preference for owner-occupied detached houses”. On the supply side, affordability problems are exacerbated by inflexible and slow responses to the need for new housing stock, lack of infrastructure and generally inefficient planning processes and development assessment by local governments.

“Affordability is not simply a matter of housing costs and income levels; it is about people’s ability to obtain housing and to stay in it” (Housing New Zealand Corporation, 2005). Affordability is concerned with different standard at a