'Not going to do anything': Businesses bemoan government's $10,000 Airbnb incentive
Hospitality vendors in WA's South West say a chronic shortage of staff accommodation is crippling their businesses — and new government initiatives to try to solve the problem are inadequate.
This is like paying scammers to “pretty please don’t scam so much”. Hear me out; why don’t we implement policies to curb or outright remove the option to host short term rentals. You know, govern them.
Its possibly because the WA government doesn't want a community backlash that the opposition can leverage their political attacks on.
It seems as soon as a home owner, or business owner, (so a large portion of the public) can claim an economic loss due to a governments decisions, it becomes an attack vector to be exploited. No matter how reasonable the decision was.
Ah yes, giving more money to the landlords, I'm sure that will work!
Really? Why reward people for taking away opportunities from others and artificially inflating property values?
Investment properties should not be a thing. AirBNB should not exist. This is what is causing the housing crisis, and providing grants to the people responsible for this mess so that they are slightly less selfish isn't going to help.
I don't even think we'd need to go that far. Also there is a place in the market for rentals, short and long term, its just taking up too much of the market. Therefore it just becomes a matter of the government augmenting the market.
Increase the comparative costs of these activities by minimising the existing incentive structures and people investors will self select out. The rental/investment property market becomes smaller, and a large vector of demand eases upward price pressure on housing.
The tricky part is, as soon as a government starts hitting investors, they'll complain and hit back, then if the rental market is squeezed that'll have an electoral effect also. This is why i'm thinking the HAFF from the federal government is maybe a good place to start the process. Because you, hopefully, remove a whole section of the lowest, most at risk people in the housing investment sector, nullifying the most poignant attacks if other policies were to come in.
I have yet to hear an argument for private rentals where public housing would not better serve the people. I agree that the challenge is that the government is concerned about pushback from investors (with a large splash of self-interest thrown in by landlord politicians).
The HAFF is a next-to-useless bandage that does nothing to actually resolve the issues of investors massively driving up housing prices alongside irresponsible population increase. 40,000 homes spread over 5-years will not do anything when we're granting 200,000 permanent visas every year.