Needed growth in Urbanisation sectors such as Housing and Transport

By Hunter Pizzey, 02/06/2020

What is the problem with affordable housing in and around Melbourne?

According to https://www.acoss.org.au/ -
“Currently, people get tax deductions when they borrow a lot of money to invest in homes to rent.
This drives up the price of housing for everyone. The tax system contributes to Australia having
among the highest housing costs and highest household debt in the world.”

The average age of a first home buyer in Melbourne is around the age of 31 -33, the majority of these
being couples and around half of these including children making it harder for them to buy a house
and support their family at the same time. The average house in Melbourne costing $855,000 and in
the inner east of Melbourne the average house price being $1.34 million and the average job paying
$107,000 a year. Ranging from $14,400 (the lowest) and $472,000 (highest average), this consonant
the fact that it would take over 9 years almost to pay off the house excluding bills, food and transport
expenses which can also add up to a lot over a 10-year period.

This would mean that people with a low-level job and are not earning as much as some people would
in the upper class could not afford the expensive housing that Melbourne has to offer in the inner
suburbs. But the housing in the outer suburbs would mean that the jobs available would not pay
enough for them to rent or buy a house. And if
they get a suitable job that is the city this would
mean a quite long commute times along with the
expense of driving a car. This leads me on to our
next point of public transport services needing
upgrades to ensure that people living in the outer
suburbs have an affordable way to commute into
central Melbourne to go to work.

Why should Melbourne’s public transport systems need upgrading?

Some of the problems that are to do with Melbourne’s transport systems include the frequency for trains,
trams and busses, these times ranging from every 30 to 60 minutes in suburban areas for busses and as much
as 20 to 40 minutes for trains and trams outside peak times. This
would mean that more people are spending time waiting for the
train or tram to arrive than actually being on it. Along with this
trams and busses suffer from delays in traffic as they take the
same route as a car would, meaning that if there is traffic where
their route is the more time people are waiting for the tram or bus
to arrive. The need for mass transit is also needed in cities like
Melbourne this would mean increasing the capacity that each
vehicle can hold along with the frequency that they come to
elevate the time waiting and how packed the vehicle is.

What are some solutions to the problem of housing affordability in Melbourne and is this idea capable of
being fool proof?

A solution to the problem of unaffordable housing may be that the development of old housing areas
meaning that the used space could be turned into something is affordable and convenient at the same time.
Another solution to this problem is where the commission housing is located in places near the beach and
Prahran meaning that it takes up a lot of space that could be used for affordable but spacious and nice living.
This would mean that you could move the commission housing out to outer suburbs where the housing
prices are cheaper but those are the suburbs where there is a lot of space as well, but it is not a convenient or
enticing. One last solution to the problem of housing is like I said in the sentences earlier to make outer
suburbs more appealing for people to move into as of right now there may not be the infrastructure to get
people in and out of the city as quickly as they might need to so upgrading that and allowing more cheaper
rent for shops and malls would make the outer suburbs more appealing for people on a budget to live in
without making lots and lots of sacrifices. This would mean that the city of Melbourne can keep expanding
as the outer suburbs become more appealing for people to live and therefore the housing prices in that area
may go down as there are more suburbs that people want to live in that are not as close to the city as
expensive suburbs such as Toorak and Albert Park.

What are solutions to the upgrades of Public transport in and around Melbourne?

A solution to the problems with transport in and around Melbourne may be having a system of public
transport that is able to be upgraded without interrupting traffic and other peoples transport for long periods
of time. This could be implemented by making an investment to get the top of the line transport systems in
place and stick with it for up to 5 years meaning that you could improve the network my replacing the trams
but still have the same tram tracks. Renovate an old station but still have trains/trams running through the
area. It is simple things like these that can make sure that these problems don’t happen again. Another
solution to deal with the capacity side of things could be to one by one and stretched out over a long period
of time improve stations for trams and trains but start out with areas that there are not a lot of people every
day using the network created minor delays to people needing to get somewhere. Then upgrading that would
mean that if something needed to get upgraded that was a station that was being used a lot and almost
always at capacity. You could transfer those people to another route. Although it may take a little longer for
them the alternate route would be able to handle the stress of people and not cause any delays to passengers.