30/01/22
The Mercury editorial of 29 Jan relating to our extreme housing emergency highlighted three key issues:
- The conflict of interest the State beaucracy has by accepting the stamp duty associated with inflated house prices and then attempting to deal with the associated social welfare fall out.
- The absence of any true ‘Emergency Housing’ response! this crisis has been building for years, and both sides of politics have ignored the threat and have simply talked up convenient statistics instead of proposing true solutions.
- The absolute tragedy of the failed $10,000 granny flat subsidy, this was a golden opportunity to deliver timely emergency housing right across our state.
We could have had thousands of households state-wide self-funding these ancillary dwellings, providing emergency accommodation and taking the heat out of the broader rental market, but no, instead the sheer load of red and green tape at Local Govt level prevented a State-wide roll-out being possible.
We all must bear the responsibility for this failing, until we deal with the overbearing red and green tape at Local Govt level the long-term solutions will continue to evade us.
Rick Cazaly. Lenah Valley. (PUBLISHED)