HIA summit to address Australia’s affordability and availability housing challenges with stellar line-up of speakers

Australian and overseas economists, commentators and analysts will take part in the 2013 HIA Housing Summit in Sydney tomorrow examining issues of new housing availability and affordability.

The Building Better Cities summit takes place at the Sofitel Sydney on July 4 at a time when new home construction in Australia is experiencing its longest trend decline in post war history with the sector enduring three recessions in the last 12 years.

The Housing Industry Association (HIA) warns this situation has had "significant negative consequences not only for the sector itself, but for the wider domestic economy given the large flow-on impact that residential construction activity has through the wider economy".

The Summit agenda will investigate the causes behind and solutions to demand and supply side constraints in the context of the future levels of residential construction activity Australia requires.

A mix of economists, commentators and overseas-based thinkers will address issues of affordability, preference for and availability of new housing.

Speakers include Nine network finance editor Ross Greenwood, Rismark economist Christopher Joye, HIA chief economist Harley Dale, Paris-based OECD economist Christophe André and Mark Clapson from the University of Westminster in London.

Ross Greenwood will examine where Australia’s appetite for new housing, Christopher Joye will tackle government policy responses to housing and Christophe André will provide lessons learned from other OECD countries addressing housing supply challenges.

The event’s MC will be ABC television journalist Jim Middleton.

Ahead of the summit, the HIA revealed the results of a survey of community service providers, which found that housing availability and affordability as the biggest problem facing the sector and the greatest drain on resources.

The survey by the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) of 500 service providers released today states that a lack of affordable housing is having a ‘devastating impact’ and that nearly 70% of housing and homeless service providers report that they struggle to meet demand.

“There has been a failure by successive governments at a state and federal level to address the fundamental constraints to housing delivery,” said HIA chief executive Graham Wolfe.

“Residential construction is currently experiencing its longest trend decline in post war history, which is being driven in part by the excessive and inefficient taxation on housing, a tight credit supply and state planning systems that constrain the timely and cost effective delivery of housing.”

“When there is shortage of homes being built, this impacts on the rental market at all levels.

“Families that would have otherwise been owner occupiers instead now compete for rental properties. This places cost pressures on those already in the rental market. Families that can now no longer afford the rental accommodation they need due to more competition, move to a lower price point and so on it goes.”

“At the end of this cascading effect is the people who are the most vulnerable, but they have nowhere else to go and this has a social and economic cost to the entire community,” he says.