The housing crisis makes everything worse

In Australia, financial security in old age is highly dependent on wealth tied to home ownership; this leaves life-long renters at a significant disadvantage. But you need wealth to enter homeownership to begin with. As house prices become more expensive compared to incomes, home ownership increasingly relies on financial assistance from parents. Again, renters and people from poorer socio-economic backgrounds are disadvantaged. This further embeds the divide between "haves" and "have-nots".

The housing shortage also leads to displacement of poor communities. People on middle incomes who in previous generations could have afforded to purchase a home now compete for cheaper homes and rental accommodation with lower income earners, thus raising prices. Building more housing – even market-rate housing – prevents displacement because there is more supply to meet demand.

Climate Change

The housing crisis also affects climate change. Just as a sprawling urban form affects human health, it's not good for the environment either. Counter-intuitively, cities release less carbon than suburbs.

When housing is denser, it supports the infrastructure for people to walk, cycle or use mass transit for their everyday needs instead of relying on a private car. Plus, it means we don't have to continue clearing undeveloped greenfield land for housing.

In addition, dual and multi-occupancy homes take less energy to light and heat per dwelling than single occupancy homes. This is because each dwelling has fewer external walls from which heat can escape.

If you want to learn more, we have an article dedicated to how our decisions around housing affect the environment.

Families

One of the biggest decisions a person can make is to add a child to their family, and housing plays a huge role in that. If you're already spending a huge amount of your income on housing, does that leave you with the financial resources to care for a child? Is a home large enough to accommodate an extra child beyond your means. One study suggests that a 10% increase in house prices in England had the net effect of a 1.3% decline in birth rates.

Australia's average fertility rate is 1.7 births per woman; however, this low birth rate doesn't seem to be for lack of wanting children. On average, Australians over 40 have 1.5 fewer children than they would like.

While an aging population will undoubtedly have huge societal consequences in decades to come, the simple human cost of losing out on potential meaningful parent-child or sibling relationships shouldn't be ignored.

Other

The housing crisis affects a host of other issues. It's thought that the housing crisis is linked to the rise of populism. People from economically depressed areas in Britain and France where house prices were stagnant were more likely to vote for Brexit and the National Front, respectively. In Ireland, Sinn Féin capitalised on the country's housing crisis to capture the youth vote.

The housing crisis is also terrible from an animal welfare perspective. Pets are being called the "forgotten victims of the housing crisis"; shelters across the country are seeing a record number of beloved pets surrendered because their owners' housing situation has changed.

Solving the housing crisis is going to take a lot of effort and a drastic change in the way we do things. But it should be clear by now that the cost of doing nothing and continuing as we are is far higher.