I got another letter published in The Age today! Much the same topic as my previous one (3/3/2008 entry). (The other letter is from a lady who also posts on the Public Population Forum.) The newspaper is doing a series on planning for Melbourne’s future, but it is focused on how to accommodate more people rather than a more fundamental solution of containing population growth. I would like to see a Government with the courage to say, “We’re full up, you’ll have to go somewhere else”.
Not just supply and demand
Housing Industry Association Victorian acting executive director Robert Harding (“City’s house prices among cheapest”, The Age, 5/5) warns that “we” need to be conscious of housing prices moving towards the “dearer markets if we are going to have the population growth and attract industry and development”. Healso says that increasing housing supply would cap property prices. Obviously, if the supply of housing is increased so that it exceeds demand, then property prices will stabilise and might even fall.This is also true of increasing the supply of pumpkins in a marketplace.
Mr. Harding’s thoughts have no more ultimate direction than the proverbial dog chasing its tail. Housing prices are obviously subject to the vicissitudes of supply and demand, and population growth will certainly increase one kind of industry – housing. There is not, however, in what Mr. Harding says an explanation or argument extolling the actual benefits to Melbourne residents of striving for an ever-increasing population.
– Jill Quirk, East Malvern
No winners in this contest
Those interviewed in “City’s house prices among cheapest” seem to regard population growth as a competition in which the city that can cram in the most people is the “winner”. They appear oblivious to the negative social or environmental consequences of such overcrowding. Reducing population growth would reduce demand for housing and help lower prices.
– Suzanne McHale
