I’ll write this as a blog, simply because that is an available platform. I’d like to get it into the hands of someone who could make political use of it but I don’t know how. So I’ll write it while I am still seething and thus have it available if I see a way to make it useful.

I wrote this last. Then it seemed to me that even if you read nothing else it says what matters most, so I repeat it here:

Governments don’t build houses. People do. The harder governments make it for people to build houses the less houses will be built.

If there are adequate houses for sale or rent, prices will be affordable. If there aren’t, they wont.

Anything that discourages people from building or restoring houses puts up the price of housing.

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I have just listened to politicians banging on at the National Press Club about the cost of housing and how they will fix it. All of them clearly live in a dream world or, more likely, hope that their hearers do. The bulk of their comments were derogatory and ignorant, aimed simply at discrediting their political opponents regardless of truth or even relevance. I don’t believe that any of them have any experience or knowledge of the reality of providing affordable housing.

That made me so bloody mad that I became impelled to write about my own brief experience of reality.

I have no technical or business knowledge of the construction industry. However, I do have first hand knowledge of government stupidity and impediment in the provision of affordable homes for a few, not very wealthy, people. Here goes:

After a lifetime of working for other people and owning our own (mortgaged) home, my wife and I discovered that all of the job opportunities in Information Technology – which we worked in – had vanished with the capability of people in Bangladesh to provide ‘Back Office’ services cheaply via the Internet. So what to do?

As we had some small savings, we thought that maybe we could help in a small way to provide homes for people and make a modest income for ourselves by doing so. After all, I was only 70 years old and my wife some years younger, so we had plenty of work left in us.

We started by building a small house in our own backyard.There was some rather pointless obstruction by one Councillor, despite the property already being rated for two dwellings, but this was overcome with the help of our own Councillor. The Council building inspector was bloody minded and obstructive too, leading to some bizarre and ludicrous changes in the design of the house and the division of the property, but we persisted and eventually we had a house, rented out for just enough to cover the mortgage payments. Not exactly millionaire territory!

We still had a bit of cash, so we bought a couple of houses on mortgage, using our savings for the deposit and paying a rather higher rate of interest than on our own home loan and on that of the new house that we’d built. We rented these later houses out for just about enough to cover their mortgages. Then with what we had left we bought a horribly rundown block of units on mortgage and restored them to a useful state. First we stripped out and dumped the contents; then we had them entirely flushed out with high-pressure hoses and totally repainted. We tore out and replaced loos, baths and sinks; fitted security doors; and refurbished built-in units. We cleaned out garages – which were piled high with dead washing machines, discarded clothing, and other things preferably not inspected too closely. Then we built dividing walls to give privacy to each tenant or owner. We paid for inspections, roof repairs, and a complete survey to ensure that no essential work had been overlooked.

Friends came and helped and, on the very last day before the agents were due to advertise the units for rental, the very pregnant young lady who lived next door brought out tea for us at midnight, as we struggled to complete the final tasks. Then we drove away to rented overnight accommodation, en-route to our daughter’s house as we currently had no home of our own.

Well it was a lot of fun and now we owed a lot of money on mortgages. We’d sold our original home, rather badly as it turned out – it resold for twice the price a year later!

After a few months at our daughter’s house we bought another, 100 year old, house for ourselves; and spent a bit on making that habitable.We also worked on it ourselves for about 10 hours a day and paid out more to roofers, plumbers etc. We live there still and we still have a mortgage.

Meanwhile the rented houses were barely paying off their mortgages and the excellent manager who had looked after the rental of them for us retired. Eventually we decided that we must sell them, only to discover that the new manager had failed to report needed maintenance on them – which we would have immediately had carried out – so that the prices that we eventually received were not too great.

Then the tenants of the house that we’d built in our backyard had a power cut. When power was restored they had no hot water, so they called out a plumber to press the button on the water heater control – and we received his bill. It was greater than the rental that we received for that month. We couldn’t increase the rent; we couldn’t afford to subsidise the tenant; so we sold that house to pay off the mortgage.

Back at the units we began to enjoy the delights of strata titling as we sold some to the occupants. Nobody could be bothered to take part in the Strata Management Committee but one owner in particular raised objections to every essential expense whilst refusing to offer any alternative suggestions. The relief when we sold the final unit and paid off the last mortgage was enormous.

It would be too boring to continue in this vein. We did make some money. Probably it came out at about $3 an hour for our time, although I never had the energy to calculate it accurately. We bought and sold a couple more houses, again at no great profit but a great deal of work making them habitable.

Throughout all of those activities there was government sniping and obstruction, adding to our costs but providing no contribution to the supply of affordable housing. A fine example of the workings of government occurred during the start of the Covid outbreak. We proposed to stop charging rent from our least well paid tenant until things improved but our letting agents said ‘Oh no! Don’t do that. The government will stop her support payment and she will be worse off’! Says it all, really.

Eventually, to our relief, we sold everything except our own – still mortgaged – home.

We are still not millionaires.

So, when I hear ignorant people banging on about the great lurks and tax benefits enjoyed by rich property owners I am a little skeptical. I don’t doubt that there are some evil bastards out there screwing their tenants and benefiting from government money but that is NOT the root of the problem. The problem is the little creeps at every level of the system who, for personal profit without useful contribution, political posturing, or simple bloody mindedness, obstruct suppliers, large or small, from providing an adequate supply of affordable housing.

If you want people to provide their savings to finance housing, by all means make it worthwhile and don’t bitch about it. If you want to use our life savings to ease the housing shortage, surely asking you to provide some relief from our costs is not unreasonable.

Governments don’t build houses. People do. The harder governments make it for people to build houses the less houses will be built.

If there are adequate houses for sale or rent, prices will be affordable. If there aren’t, they wont.

Anything that discourages people from building or restoring houses puts up the price of housing.

And a final thought:

There is no such thing as ‘Government Money’. There is only OUR money, that we have earned and made possible by OUR work, which governments have taken from us by stealth or brute force. Whatever they propose, WE pay for.