Housing Policy in Australia: Issues, Government Responses and Potential Policy Options

Running head: URBAN PLANNING
Urban Planning
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1URBAN PLANNING
Table of Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................2
Overview of housing system in Australia:.................................................................................2
Chief issue related to housing policy:........................................................................................3
Present government responses:..................................................................................................4
Potential policy options and recommendations:........................................................................6
Conclusion:................................................................................................................................7
References:.................................................................................................................................8

2URBAN PLANNING
Introduction:
Housing policy refers as government action to obtain housing objectives in a country.
These objectives consider the development of housing quality along with stock of dwellings
and dealing with insufficient homes for people. Thus, housing policy chiefly considers the
condition and supply of the housing stock (Tighe, Hatch and Mead 2017). Housing affects the
welfare system of Australia, especially in urban areas as well. The Commonwealth
Government takes responsibilities to implement these policy levers for controlling housing
demand. On the other side, state, territory and local governments take responsibilities to
control housing supply based on policy levers (Beer et al. 2016). At present, the country has
experienced insufficient supply of houses and consequently housing prices gave increased
significantly due to excess demand in some well-known urban areas like Sydney and
Melbourne.
This report intends to focus on housing policy issue of Australia through explaining
recent government responses. Moreover, this report will discuss about potential policy
options based on which further recommendations can be provided.
Overview of housing system in Australia:
Housing policy of the Australia government tries to find reasons regarding housing
market failures and welfare benefits of home ownership. The government of any country tries
to adopt normative policy goal to provide adequate and appropriate houses by sufficient
number to meet present and future excess demand. Main elements of housing policy in
Australia are divided under three heads, which are, commonwealth, states and local (Gurran
and Ruming 2016). Commonwealth government applies macroeconomic policy, industry
policy and Commonwealth State Housing Agreement (CSHA) to fund the states and
territories. State government considers public housing authorities, assistance to income
buyers, public rental housing, planning and consumer protection. On the other side, local