Need beats greed for low-cost homes

Browsing through Twitter at the weekend, I happened upon this from our friends at the Tenants Union (@TUNSW) quoting an article in the Melbourne Age.

“Unemployed single parents have no chance in private rental,” says the paper’s social affairs editor Michelle Griffin. “Seven in every 10 single-parent families seeking emergency accommodation are turned away.”

That’s a pretty damning statistic and it speaks volumes about our society.  However, I can’t help thinking that there must be a solution here in StrataLand.

Is it beyond the wit and ingenuity of our developers and planners to build low-cost housing, a proportion of which is set aside for single parents and their kids, with childminding, pre-school and playground facilities built-in.

Of course, that’s bordering on ghetto-isation but isn’t it time need  became a higher priority than greed in housing’s too-hard basket.

Here’s a plan – a 20-storey block with seniors housing on the bottom five floors, then six floors of single parents, six floors of student accommodation, a buffer floor of facilities – gym, kindy, family restaurant – then two floors of luxury apartments to help pay for it.

And whoever builds it gets a prime piece of state-owned land on which to build the luxury block of their capitalist dreams.

Sorted.