The housing crisis is global. What are other countries doing about it?
Australia is not the only country facing a housing crisis. Alan Kohler takes us on a whistle-stop tour of five governments trying to make homes more affordable
A lthough Australians are naturally focused on their own housing misery, the truth is that the crisis is global. Much of the developed world has a dire housing shortage and prices are rapidly becoming unaffordable everywhere, or already are. Leo Tolstoy’s maxim “Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” applies to each country’s problems with housing.
Leaving aside the migration and refugee flows that are causing extreme housing shortages in some countries, the number of houses being built in the world is simply falling short of population growth, even though that growth is declining. UN-Habitat says the world needs to build 96,000 affordable homes every day to house the 3 billion people who will need adequate housing by 2030.
And just as each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, each country is dealing with housing in its own way – some are doing it well, some not so well. Here are a few of them.
