Eliminating the Housing Shortage

Given the seriousness of the issue, housing will be given the priority it deserves and will be one of the first Community Enterprises that will be commenced. Its goal will be to buy housing, where appropriate, or build enough accommodation to house those who need it.

According to the AIHW report 2019, there were 140,600 applicants on the waiting list for public housing. The average time it took to provide them with housing was between 1 to 2 years depending on whether they were high need individuals or not.

The introduction of the Community Credits will dramatically change the public housing landscape:

Stage 1. Owners of rental properties that are occupied by Community Credits (CC) recipients, will be asked to accept CC as rental payment. Some will accept, but most probably won’t as the banks won’t accept CC currency, as it loses its value once it has been spent.

Stage 2. Rental property owners who do not accept CC as payment will be offered the market price for their property. If they accept, then the property will become the property of the Co-operative which provides the labour and the current tenants will continue to live there, as long as they continue to contribute to Community Enterprise (CE) activities

Stage 3. For situations where rental owners do not accept CC as payment and they do not accept a package for their rental property, then the tenant/s CC payment will be reduced by the rental amount which will be paid to the house owner in $AUD until the CE system built the rental stock required and the tenants are rehoused.

The above strategy, together with the increase in income being received by CE employees, will increase the supply of housing stock and reduce the demand for low-cost accommodation which will remove the shortage and allow a balanced amount of housing stock to be maintained.

One key exception to the above will be for anyone who partly owns their own home. If you own your own home and are earning Community Credits as a Community Enterprise employee, then the amount owed to the bank will be repayable to the government in Community Credits as the funding of these homes will be transferred to a Community Enterprise Bank.

We can do better. Time for a Real Change!

All Policies are based around the Counterbalance Economics Model as outlined in the Discussion Paper (Click Here)