The full article can be found at https://www.9news.com.au/national/rental-housing-crisis-australia-solutions-rent-cap-airbnb-supply-landlords-explained/ .
"Ask three different people about how to solve Australia's rental crisis and you'll likely get three different answers.
So, after asking two housing experts whether the cost of renting was likely to ease next year and whether the federal government's signature housing policy was enough of an intervention – spoilers: probably not and definitely not, respectively – 9news.com.au invited them to offer up some policies that would address the issue."..........
Section regarding AirBNB/STAs:
Address Airbnbs
Supply is one of the key issues causing the rental crisis. While building more social and affordable housing is one way to increase supply, there are plenty of current homes in Australia that could be used to address the issue.
On the night of the 2021 census, more than a million dwellings were sitting empty – a massive untapped potential rental supply.
"Even if 20 per cent of those million properties were brought into the market, it'd be another 200,000 properties. This is an enormous amount," Morris said. [UTS's Professor Alan Morris]
One potential culprit both he and Martin identified was Airbnbs.
"The total lack of regulation of Airbnb, that's a real problem," Morris added.
"It would appear that, in many instances, properties are vacant for most of the year and then they rent it out during the high season, and landlords are able to recoup as much as they would if it was a normal rental.
"So I think there needs to be some type of system which really encourages these properties to be on the normal rental market rather than Airbnb."
Martin said while a Canadian-style vacancy tax could help do just that, Victoria's lack of success in implementing a similar but "underwhelming" system should encourage governments and local councils to look at other options.
"Under current (development) rules we're very permissive about allowing housing to be used for tourism purposes. And we could be tightening up those rules," he said.
"We could even be pricing permission to use a property for Airbnb; a person might have to pay such an amount that they might think twice about whether it's worth their while doing Airbnb, whether it's actually worth their while to put it into rental where it's actually a home for someone.
"So those sorts of things, using our planning system a bit more purposefully and really trying to drive some of our housing stock currently used as tourism or second homes into the long-term rental sector."
Read the full article at https://www.9news.com.au/national/rental-housing-crisis-australia-solutions-rent-cap-airbnb-supply-landlords-explained
Editor's Note:
Do you have a view on the short term accommodation issue in Noosa? We would love to hear from you and are happy to post your contribution here anonymously. The more local stories we have the better. Please always cite sources whenever statistics are quoted. Email to: nnsnoosa1@gmail.com
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