Over the weekend, the NSW Department of Planning and Environment released research showing that the equivalent of 20 years of housing supply is tied up in empty bedrooms, mostly pertaining to older empty nesters, and that this is making it increasingly difficult for young households to find “family-friendly” accommodation.
This research followed a major study released last year by Bob Birrell and David McCloskey from the Australian Population Research Institute, which found that in the inner and middle suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne, 50% to 60% of the detached housing stock was occupied by older households in 2011, and that their numbers would rise rapidly into the future, thus depriving younger households of ‘family-friendly’ accommodation.
