Housing affordability, affordable housing and the policy agenda

What has become of the great Australian dream of affordable home-ownership? With more and more people facing difficulties in buying or renting their home over recent years, Australian housing affordability has become a hot topic for the media, politicians and consumer advocates. This chapter first discusses the policies that have helped to shape Australia's housing system within and across cities and explains how they have contributed to worsening housing affordability outcomes for many low- and moderate-income households, especially those in younger generations. It then considers recent attempts by governments to address deteriorating housing affordability, and their limitations. The chapter concludes by discussing the need for a broader, more strategic conception of housing policy and suggests how current policy and regulatory settings, public funding incentives, planning policies and new institutional delivery arrangements could be positively directed to expanding the availability of well-located forms of affordable housing in Australia's cities