I read this article recently. Given how expensive house prices have become in recent years, even though many young people, myself included would fight to own a home, I think those days might be numbered. But we can’t keep renting at the mercy of landlords forever. So I think we should adopt the Vienna Model and build more social housing for everyone, particularly as transit oriented development. Could this solve Brisbanes Housing Crisis. Building more Government owned housing?. We used to do a lot of it back in the housing commission days.
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Not entirely transit related but I think any transit oriented development would ideally be affordable social housing where possible, owned by either state or federal government or the Brisbane City Council.
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100 percent
I think the biggest roadblock to this will be BCC’s NIMBY-friendly policies.
We can’t have medium-density housing around Eagle Junction station, which has plenty of services, because preserving a heap of old Queenslanders is more important.
I understand the need to preserve some, but not all of them. It’s ridiculous.
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Agreed. Some heritage is good to keep, but I’d much rather see notable examples retained and restored, either as houses or as local amenities (think museum, library, cafe, etc). As an example of how this could look, there’s a beautiful old Queenslander on the corner of Hamilton Place and Jeays St in Bowen Hills. The Google maps photo doesn’t do it justice, but it’s a corner block with a very well preserved home and a very large and well-kept garden. I think it might still be used as a house, but regardless it’s a great way to see what the area once looked like.
The current system of heritage overlays on the other hand just leads to suburbs stagnating, and if you’ve ever lived in one of those as a renter you’d be well aware of how well ‘preserved’ some landlords like to keep them - mold and all.
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Can’t we go back to the Joh Days and use the police to suppress all the Nimbies.
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A while ago I highlighted this planning stuff up near EJ station (which should have been acquired as QR property for future projects) - but also could have been used as high density development close to a rail line in some sort of co-build of infrastructure below residential. The heritage overlays need to be protected but there are a tonne of parcels that are not subject to this that could be used.
Example one - this monstrous recently built single family concrete box on Junction Rd. Zoned 2-3 stories.
Example two - two empty plots. Zoned 2-3 stories.
Example three - empty plot owned by government as part of Eagle Junction station precinct. Zoned transport use (great!, but a great opportunity to co-locate high density residential as part of whatever is earmarked for this space).
BCC and the QLD Government simply have no interest in identifying opportunities for TOD in a systematic way.
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I feel like the government would rather have speculative investors buy up and land bank.
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Let’s clarify, social housing is an umbrella term covering both public housing (government) and community housing (non-government organisations).
There’s a huge shortage of all types of social housing in Australia.
I’m supportive of all social housing regardless of who provides it. But it seems to me that public housing specifically is what most people are describing above that they want to see. And I do think public housing is superior, as the financial cost to tenants is lower, and some housing organisations (especially those run by religious groups) are more likely to impose their morals as a condition of tenancy.
Nevertheless, community housing has its place, and community housing organisations seem less far likely to land bank than the private sector. Given the reluctance of governments to seriously invest in public housing, and them being preoccupied with all their other financial commitments, partnering with community housing organisations for specific station precincts might be the way to go if we want to see more TOD this side of the Olympics.
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It’s always been strange to me that the Government has actively moved away from public owned housing to charity owned housing. Also, and I’m not a finance guy so I don’t get the technicalities, it has always irked me that the government frequently just sells off land to develop instead of partnering with someone, developing it, and then transferring the delivered product.
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This is the result of four and half decades worth of propaganda being pushed through media and politics, claiming that the public sector can’t do anything right and the private sector is always superior. While the private sector has got better outcomes for the public in some industries, in many others, only their shareholders and executives have benefited, at the expense of everyone else. Affordable housing is something the private sector simply has no interest in delivering, because it isn’t as profitable as market-rate or luxury housing.
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The core issue is that state governments are really cash strapped compared to the Feds. That’s why state governments have been getting out of direct housing delivery ever since the neoliberal reforms, with Commonwealth Rent Assistance kinda filling the gap at the margin (it’s got lots of issues too, both in terms of being too low and the conditions on it).
Having said that, while do have about half as much non-market housing (as a percentage) it was never that much to begin with, just over 7%. So we’ve gone from ~93% to ~97% market-rate housing. (ref)
So there’s several separate questions:
- What urban form do we want to have (agreeing that “around transit” is a good place for density to be)
- How do we ensure enough market rate housing gets built to house the vast majority of people (agreeing to have density around my local train station)
- How do we want to subsidise housing for the (hopefully few) folks who really do need it
I’ll enumerate a few approaches which have issues:
- Housing authorities often don’t want zoning exemptions, because that erodes their social license.
- Some places have also concluded that it’s better to spread out social housing among the general population and try to not have a high concentration of poverty. I’m not 100% sure where Qld has landed on this.
- Inclusive zoning (where some units in a new build are tithed over to social housing) is superficially attractive, but it’s hard to get it right (because it costs more to build more, you can’t tithe a fractional unit, etc). I rate it a non-starter without a density bonus.
- Rent control at best prevents displacement (which is a worthy goal) but when it fails it prevents any sort of capital improvement other than for owner-occupiers (and sometimes you get wacky situations like people trying to inherit the lease on a rent-controlled apartment).
Also you get stuff like this:
Another example, the Dept. of Housing has owned this empty site directly between Exhibition and Bowen Hills station since at least 2009 (when Google street view data starts)
It’s right in between a major transit hub and a soon-to-be busy station, and only about 10 minutes walk away from RBWH. It’s a pretty large block in a built-up area, perfect for a TOD, and yet it’s been a field of grass for a decade and a half
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Maybe they’re waiting for CRR to open? 
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A lot of our homes overwhelmingly go to the highest bidder, which are often investors
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And that’s why the government needs to put restrictions on investors. They’ve tried everything possible to not do that, mostly through removing barriers and restrictions for first home buyers. But that ends up allowing first home buyers to bid higher, thereby adding to rising house prices.
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Only one house per person. Unless co buying with extended family so long as family is staying in it and it’s not being used for profit
A lot of housing has been approved it’s just the matter of getting it built.
That includes higher density near stations and some approved TODs
The construction industry should pick up this year though, so we will see things accelerated.