20 May 2012

Sacrificing sunlight for affordable housing

According to Chasing the sun among high-rises a heated issue, there is significant resistance to high-rise development in Melbourne's CBD, mainly because of fears that high-rise buildings would destroy sunlight.


Victoria is facing a massive housing affordability crisis that is  resulting in middle-class people paying exorbitant rent or massively inflated prices (and therefore interest repayments) on their homes. Giving first home owners grants only increases demand for houses and pushes house prices up even more. The answer is to increase the amount of accommodation. One way of doing this is to build outwards. Another way is to build upwards. In the face of a housing affordability crisis that is crippling this country, I am surprised that there are people more concerned about sunlight at lunchtime. Governments need to let property developers build more accommodation. Increasing supply is the only way prices will go down.

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