Housing research shows increased regulation a barrier to construction growth

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The question of how to build homes faster is keeping policymakers across the country up at night. Now strong growth in the number of planners, and the rules they work with, could offer a clue to what ails the housing industry.

Transcript

00:00The group calling themselves YIMBYs, that stands for Yes In My Backyard, has come up

00:07with some pretty interesting housing research.

00:10The number of urban and town planners has increased ninefold in 40 years, much more

00:15than the increase in house prices that have led to the affordability crisis.

00:20But it's not resulting in more houses, quite the opposite.

00:23The number of dwellings per planner used to be 50 per year.

00:28Now it's less than nine.

00:31YIMBYs are a global political movement of young people that started 10 years ago in San Francisco

00:37to oppose the mostly old NIMBYs trying to stop new housing developments in their suburbs.

00:43In Australia, a group emulating them started up in Canberra four years ago, and then more

00:47sprung up in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

00:51Recently they joined forces to form the Abundant Housing Network.

00:54Anyway, they're campaigners, so they're biased.

00:58But this research is based on ABS statistics.

01:01Also the explosion in the number of planners is not the planners fault.

01:04It's the fault of governments.

01:07They have loaded the business of building houses with more and more regulations and complications.

01:14Planners are employed by councils and governments to make building houses more difficult.

01:19And developers employ them to navigate those regulations and deal with the other planners.

01:25So the time it takes to get developments approved, as all the planners grapple with each other,

01:29has also exploded.

01:31And the more planners there are, the fewer houses get built.

01:35That's not because there are more planners, but because it shows how many regulations there

01:39are slowing developers down.

01:42And finally, let's compare the number of planners with the number of building workers per house.

01:48We knew already that construction productivity had halved, and there's been a lot of furrowed

01:52brows and learned reports about how to fix that.

01:55But planner productivity is far worse.

01:59And the only way to fix that is to deregulate.

02:02Thank you!

02:03It's a good idea.

02:04Thank you!

02:07Thanks!

02:08You're welcome!

02:16I'm glad you're here.

02:24How are you doing?

02:26I'm glad you're here!

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