Some people I know who supported the protests do so because they’re upset at the upcoming spare bedroom tax, which aims to bring more homes on the market to lower prices. They don’t care about housing people, they care about profit.
I’m also not convinced cutting immigration would help at all when it would only discourage construction, which is already below what’s needed to support birthrate + people moving in from rural areas. Immigration isn’t the cause of the crisis, so cutting it isn’t the solution.
mtpender@aussie.zone 3 weeks ago
Australia built 180,000 homes in 2024
Australia’s immigration numbers were around 500,000 over the same period.
But no, that totally doesn’t have any negative impact on housing affordability. /s
yistdaj@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
You seem to be under the impression that we will just magically build and build if people are gone, but that’s not realistic. My point was that reducing immigration would significantly cut the number of houses built under the current housing market. We may be building too few homes now, but I doubt much at all will be built after cutting immigration either.
The problem is not that we have a housing market that’s too big, it’s that we have a broken market. Housing entering the market in this country may be insufficient when demand is high, but it’s straight up not entering the market where demand is low, and housing prices are higher than ever everywhere. We need to figure out why the market is broken and fix that if we even want so see housing prices stabilise for an extended period, let alone fall. Reducing immigration is a distraction at best.
mtpender@aussie.zone 3 weeks ago
The number of people coming in to the country is FAR exceeding our ability to build. The first thing we need to do is reduce our intake (reduce demand) so we can catch up. I’m not saying we need to stop ALL immigration, just that right now, reducing immigration is one of the few levers we have to help alleviate the crisis. Then we can talk about removing Negative Gearing and Capitol Gains Tax Concessions, maybe even put some limits on property investing.
yistdaj@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
What would you say are limiting factors on our ability to build then, if you think reducing immigration won’t significantly reduce housing construction?
Why do you say immigration a lever to pull but not the factors limiting construction?
Nbard@aussie.zone 3 weeks ago
What’s your source for these numbers?
mtpender@aussie.zone 3 weeks ago
Australian Bureau of Statistics
appetizer@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
That’s 500,000 coming in via immigration. This includes returning citizens. What is the number that left Australia during the same period? The data is available at the same location. You need to subtract one from the other and then look at that number and how it has changed over the last decade.