For tenants, this is personal

ACCOMMODATION SHORTAGE

ENTIRE premises booked out for more than six months do not make up a significant number of Airbnbs, we’re informed. I and many others can vouch for a flurry of instances where private rentals were turned into short-term accommodation because there was more money on average of two to three nights of it being hired out spread across the year than in a steady weekly income. Tenants have received the boot because they can’t match a huge unforeseen rental increase that has to compete with the possibility of Airbnb and tax deductions. Entire streets have shot up in market value and rents “reassessed” with prohibitive three-figure increases.

Who cares if a house is empty when, if you’re smart, you could be ahead of the game with 30-40 per cent occupancy, especially with price-gouging in peak seasons? That’s not personal, that’s business. Sadly for many tenants their attachment to a long-term rental is very personal.

A lack of planning has landed us where we are. Airbnb has been popular due in part to self-catering options and local details and creature comforts lost in some hotel chains. Marketing needs to be clever. This is not the fault of Airbnb alone.

Between the lack of accommodation going back several years in correlation with the “the Mona effect”, the influx of international students (and subsequent relocation of regional Tasmanian student tenancies at short notice), on top of financial incentives to rent out inner city dwellings as Airbnb or as bulk shared student housing, we have created a rapid housing crisis. Add to this, the pressure on low income/Centrelink recipients who cannot be assisted by usual agencies if they are in rental stress at private market rates, this is forcing more and more people into homelessness and risk behaviours associated with loss of housing. The housing priority waiting list is ever longer than the conga lines at some property inspections.

This needs to be a co-ordinated state priority. While all the stakeholders bicker about who is more responsible, tourists are putting call-outs online six months ahead of summer that they’ve booked flights but can’t find suitable family accommodation, and more and more locals live in fear of opening their mail to discover they won’t be able to renew their lease.

Sarah Heald Mt Stuart

Airbnb barely counts

FOR goodness’ sake, the short-stay model is no more responsible for the housing crisis than Will Hodgman is for the booming tourist and commercial building economy in Tasmania. This kind of distraction takes the heat of the real reasons; decades of under investment in public and social housing. Yes, short-term accommodation model has an impact, however, had state governments, past and present, kept up with demand, it would not have been an issue at all.

The simple solution is supply. Australia needs to build at least 20,000 social/affordable properties a year just to keep up with current demand. A few hundred in the equation will have zero impact. Voters must demand the State Government start building houses in the thousands, not piecemeal offerings of 40 houses a few times a year. Imagine the economic boom a social housing building program would bring. Housing supply is required on a grand scale, so pollies, stop the distraction and spin and get to it!

Lisa Roberts Lutana

Backyard, not blandness

LOUISE Bloomfield is no doubt correct that UTAS is a major contributor to the housing shortage (Talking Point, January 18). The university should build more accommodation. I disagree that Hobart City Council is to be blamed for playing a part by denying many multi-residence buildings. This city does not want the poorquality accommodation proven to be a failure in other cities. We should not let our councils be manipulated by developers and property investors.

Heaven help us if we allow Hobart to resemble similar cities in this nation and overseas, crass development at the expense of residents to line the pockets of developers and real estate agents. We are critical of our councils on many fronts and rightly so but Hobart City Council has shown great understanding with residential development applications.

Future generations should not be denied the benefits of a backyard and a three-bedroom home to endure life in some bland, soulless housing block without the opportunities most of us have experienced.

Glen Pears Geilston Bay