negative gearbox
Imagine a developed state whose housing policy entailed not the taxpayer subsidisation of low-income tenants or prospective homeowners, but taxpayer subsidisation of landlords and banks – to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars annually, many times more than what the state (sporadically) invests in so-called "social housing".
By their own Hobbesian account of human nature – though it is in fact superfluous to my argument – we should expect corruption and inequity to flourish under such a policy as negative gearing. Witness quarterly banking profits in their billions, homeless people in their thousands: both equally restless. Negative gearing is that policy by which "the Commonwealth" elicits speculation and investment in the private property market, generating untold personal wealth for some, but reducing housing affordability for tenants and owner-occupiers alike.
Housing in Australia, especially under negative gearing, drives a wedge between the propertied and the great un-propertied, the underclass. With perhaps few exceptions, our landlords are laughing all the way to the banks, which in turn are crying poor, at least publicly. (It’s all relative: but the suffering of the poor is by far the greatest, and the most significant – though you would never have guessed by looking at a media landscape increasingly saturated with information relevant only to players within financial markets.)
Owner-occupiers and tenants, not landlords, make a home, plant a garden, realise the full potential of property in terms of quality of life. But of these it is only tenants who are denied equity, a share in what has been collectively built. It is the tenant who must start over, reinvent the wheel of domesticity each and every time a landlord (or their agent) decides to increase the rent, or worse, simply remove tenants from the premises on a speculative whim.
In our inner suburbs, tenant families are linchpins of community. But greed for personal gain ensures that housing close to the best state schools, the best public transport – infrastructure that ostensibly belongs to all – will command a premium rent. Owner-occupiers and landlords are the ones who benefit most, directly and indirectly, from public investment in schools and transport. Tenants benefit least, if at all; their children will be denied attendance at the best state schools – not by law, but by property/poverty (Australia’s unwritten law). The education and emotional development of tenants’ children – but not of owner-occupier’s or landlord’s – will thus be prone to disruption, and so the poverty cycle – vicious, downward – is set to repeat. Denial of access to “public” transport – though here property/poverty and the law do coincide to disempower the underclass – presents a similarly bleak suburban trajectory.
What we need then are spanners, or maybe somebody’s shoe, with which to dismantle or at very least disrupt, the negative gearbox of private wealth in this country.
By their own Hobbesian account of human nature – though it is in fact superfluous to my argument – we should expect corruption and inequity to flourish under such a policy as negative gearing. Witness quarterly banking profits in their billions, homeless people in their thousands: both equally restless. Negative gearing is that policy by which "the Commonwealth" elicits speculation and investment in the private property market, generating untold personal wealth for some, but reducing housing affordability for tenants and owner-occupiers alike.
Housing in Australia, especially under negative gearing, drives a wedge between the propertied and the great un-propertied, the underclass. With perhaps few exceptions, our landlords are laughing all the way to the banks, which in turn are crying poor, at least publicly. (It’s all relative: but the suffering of the poor is by far the greatest, and the most significant – though you would never have guessed by looking at a media landscape increasingly saturated with information relevant only to players within financial markets.)
Owner-occupiers and tenants, not landlords, make a home, plant a garden, realise the full potential of property in terms of quality of life. But of these it is only tenants who are denied equity, a share in what has been collectively built. It is the tenant who must start over, reinvent the wheel of domesticity each and every time a landlord (or their agent) decides to increase the rent, or worse, simply remove tenants from the premises on a speculative whim.
In our inner suburbs, tenant families are linchpins of community. But greed for personal gain ensures that housing close to the best state schools, the best public transport – infrastructure that ostensibly belongs to all – will command a premium rent. Owner-occupiers and landlords are the ones who benefit most, directly and indirectly, from public investment in schools and transport. Tenants benefit least, if at all; their children will be denied attendance at the best state schools – not by law, but by property/poverty (Australia’s unwritten law). The education and emotional development of tenants’ children – but not of owner-occupier’s or landlord’s – will thus be prone to disruption, and so the poverty cycle – vicious, downward – is set to repeat. Denial of access to “public” transport – though here property/poverty and the law do coincide to disempower the underclass – presents a similarly bleak suburban trajectory.
What we need then are spanners, or maybe somebody’s shoe, with which to dismantle or at very least disrupt, the negative gearbox of private wealth in this country.