An archive.org link to the alien site where Jonathan Sriranganathan brought his proposal to the /r/brisbane users, a little before this policy was formally released.
Bless your cotton socks for caching the old.reddit.com version. I accidentally looked at the "new" Reddit site recently. It was.... disappointing.
This seems too aggressive a policy. I say that even though I don't own a property and have rent affordability issues. There needs to be a differentiation between a house owned for the purpose of public rental or something else. You should be allowed to privately own something.
Quit fucking around with the private market and drive the price down by competing. Build and keep ownership of Public Housing. It's the only way forward. Maybe a referendum should be held on enshrining the right to housing so no future liberal asshole can sell off public assets again.
You should be allowed to privately own something
I don't believe anybody is suggesting you can't. The issue is simply balancing that right with the needs of residents who need a place to live. The proposal is, at its heart, simple: if you own a home, you need to be using it. Live in it yourself, or rent it out. If it's not got anyone living in it, you pay an extra tax. You still own it, and you get to keep all the money from that rent. The proposed rule change is simply about recognising that (a) having a home is a basic human need and a basic right, and (b) it's innately a very scarce resource.
drive the price down by competing. Build and keep ownership of Public Housing.
Public Housing is a State Government responsibility, while this is a proposed Council policy. The most Council can do with regards to providing more housing is to approve more housing to be built by the private market, including changing the zoning laws to enable that. And while the Greens do not go as far in this direction as I would like (I'd like low-density residential to be abolished entirely in favour of low-medium density 2–3 storey mix), they do seem more supportive of gentle density than the LNP is. See their Eagle Farm Racecourse proposal for example.
I would love to see vacancy taxes in my city. Its the only way of countering the assetization of housing. People are more concerned about the value of the property than revenue. So they keep rent high to make the property look good. Vacancy taxes are the only thing that solve this directly.
Public housing can make rent more affordable and improve housing security. For people living in the public housing as well as those in the private properties that are now in competition with the public sector.
But only vacancy taxes can reign in property investment firms hoping for profit from appreciation rather than revenue. With vacancy taxes they have to actually provide a product and not just hold onto land.
Yeah I think it's really important to look at the problem holistically and address it from multiple angles.
Improving tenants' rights is important so that people living in rentals have a good quality of life and are able to speak up for themselves when there's something wrong.
But that might cause some places to be taken off the market, with people preferring the lazy option of keeping it empty rather than deal with providing a service that meets the legal minimum standard. So that's where vacancy levies come in.
But that doesn't address the price of rentals. Or of the related issue of how much it costs for first home buyers to get their own place. For that, we need more supply. Change zoning laws to allow much more gentle density across the whole city. Right now, BCC prefers a very limited process where they approve only very high density at a slow rate, with the remainder of the city being low density only. We need a wider-sweeping change with medium density across the whole city.
And to prevent exploitation by the private market, public housing should make up a good percentage of the overall market. Something like 20% should be the bare minimum that we look at.
And you can tinker around the edge with other little things, like short-term accommodation regulation.
None of these things, on their own, can fix the problem. But when you look at them holistically they each feed into addressing the underlying crisis while also reinforcing each other.
You're right to mention how interconnected it all is.
- Tenant rights helps to prevent evictions, discrimination, and to ensure good maintenance.
- Vacancy taxes ensures that landlords can't artificially shrink supply to raise prices and increase values, and to prevent capital strike.
- Public housing creates competition that lowers prices for renters.
- Appropriate volume of supply makes sure that everyone is housed in a basic sense. But only if it is the right kind of supply
- If any of these categories are off they impact the others
I see lots of people rush to say that supply is the problem but you have to consider how market forces act upon the supply. "Luxury" developments don't help most people. And as you said it has to be the right density too. In my city more than 10% of units are vacant at any time. Thats at least 20,000 units. This is why I want vacancy taxes so much. Zoning needs to be improved, and its worth new construction to do so. But in most US cities, idk about Australia, vacancy taxes would be enough increase in supply on their own.
Its also super important to mention the ramifications are commercial zoning. Vacancy taxes are even more important there. Commercial landlords are all holding out for a big chain to move in so they can jack up prices. Its why there are so few niche stores in US cities nowadays.
I'm ok with very high density zoning if its paired with expansions to mass transit. But generally speaking row housing and 3-4 story apartment buildings are the bread and butter. However any current city dominated by single family detached housing needs serious changes, seriously quickly. In those situations "spikey" development is worth it.
LOL. Jono's political career might be fairly brief I think. These policies are designed to get traction on social media but they're completely impractical.
Only rate payers vote in council elections and this guy's platform is... checks notes... punishing rate payers. How is he proposing to determine which homes are vacant?
The usual tired rhetoric about vacant homes and Short Term Rentals. The study he's referencing by Bond et al doesn't even support this type of punitive taxation.
Only rate payers vote in council elections
Incorrect. Council elections are voted in by all local residents.
Oof. You're right. In west aus council elections aren't compulsory which I guess led to (but does not excuse) my confusion.
Ah interesting.
In Queensland the elections are compulsory, but it's worth noting that it's optional preferential. So voters are allowed to just number "1" and stop there, if they want.
The LNP uses this to great effect in their campaigns, and it's apparently part of the reason they have such a large majority of seats in BCC.
Jono’s political career might be fairly brief I think
FWIW, I think this depends on precisely what you mean by it.
He's already had a reasonably long 7 years as a local councillor before he resigned earlier this year.
He also pretty clearly doesn't expect to actually win Lord Mayoralty next year. He's using his candidacy as a way to help prop up the local ward campaigns of other candidates, as well as to bring attention to the issues that he believes in. This much was, IMO, obvious just by paying attention to the polling numbers and history, but he actually came out and said it explicitly a while ago too.
I wouldn't be surprised if he runs again in 2028 for the same reason. Or maybe makes a state run in October 2024, or a federal run in 2025. Would those consist part of his "political career"?
As for the practicality of his proposal, that's a reasonable critique I think. How would you determine it? Not clear, and might cause issues with enforcement. But if those issues can be resolved, the policy itself is a very good one in my opinion. There are apparently thousands of vacant homes in Brisbane. That's enough to make a very significant dent in the rental crisis. Heck, it's enough that even if compliance rates are low, it could still be worth doing to make some dent.
Short term rentals I comparatively agree. These aren't in the thousands, but more in the hundreds. I think it's still worth restricting because even hundreds is still hundreds of real people who could get housed. And also because short term accommodation via the like of Airbnb aren't complying with the same types of safety and accessibility laws that more conventional short-term accommodation like hotels have to meet. This policy (which I think it's worth remembering is in principle bipartisan—the LNP brought in increased rates for short-term accommodation last year, and the Greens policy would just be an increased version of this) is too often talked about as a silver bullet, which it just isn't. But that doesn't mean it isn't worth doing, in combination with a number of other changes.
