Poll after poll reveals that the cost of housing is one of the most pressing challenges confronting the Australian community.
Hundreds of thousands of households are in a housing stress - when they pay more than thirty per cent of their gross income on their housing cost, whether theyre renting or owning.
CEO of NSW Council of Social Service Tracy Howe says were looking at a crisis.
Dr Louise Crabtree is a senior fellow researcher at the Institute of Culture and Society at Western Sydney University.
She is looking at how we can diversify the housing options that we currently have.
There is obviously a need for affordability across both tenures to be addressed. And we know the waiting list for public and community housing are sitting in the ten plus years, so we obviously have a substantial gap of what the housing system is currently delivering.
State and federal governments are promising action to make housing more affordable but Treasurer Scott Morrison warns that there is no silver bullet to improve affordability in the short term.
In his budget he acknowledges that a key factor in easing housing affordability now, and into the future, is building more homes.
Morrison announced that the government will boost the supply of housing by working with state and territory governments to set housing supply targets and facilitate planning and zoning reform.
This will be achieved by a new National Housing and Homelessness Agreement, with funding to help people who are homeless and those in need of crisis accommodation.
For Tracy Howe, CEO of NSW Council of Social Service this is good news in the long run but she says there is no immediate relief for people at the margins of our society.
She says the government proposal wont have a significant impact on the housing market.
Meanwhile, the government plans to establish a $1 billion National Housing Infrastructure Facility to develop new homes and apartments on selected sites.
Ned Cutcher who works for the Tenants Union says thats good for developers and landlords but not for those who require affordable accommodation now.
And in a further move, surplus Commonwealth land will be made available for housing construction together with opportunities for Australias small community housing sector to access funds at cheaper rates.
Dr Louise Crabtree from Western Sydney University says its time the government recognised the contribution the sector can make towards solving Australias housing crisis.
Despite Dr Crabtrees cautious praise for some of the measures in the budget to increase the supply of housing, she says some major distortions of the housing market were left untouched.
The elephant in the room is the fact that nothing was said about negative gearing and nothing was said about capital gains tax exemptions and those are the key drivers of a lot of the problems that we are seeing. Understandably there is a lot of commentary saying that this is window-dressing, sort of band-aid solutions.
Meanwhile, the Government says it is addressing widespread concerns related to tax-breaks for property investors.
From 1 July 2017, deductions for travel expenses related to owning a residential investment property will be disallowed.
This, says the Government, is an integrity measure to address concerns that such deductions are being abused and will contribute to slowing down the seemingly unstoppable rise in housing prices.
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