The Mound - #2 - Housing Supply
Welcome to The Mound, a weekly newsletter in which we at Good One Creative pitch— for free — our solutions to the world’s problems
According to former RBA economist Tony Richards, Australia could have built an extra 1.3 million homes over the past 20 years if not for the interference of NIMBYs.
Richards presents the case that NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) agitators are in fact “chiefly to blame” for our current housing undersupply, meaning that YES! When regular citizens organise, they really can make a difference / things much worse.
But these poster-making, exclamatory lawn jockeys are - at the end of the long-weekend - human beings, people who shouldn’t be blamed for not wanting to live in the oppressive shadow of a tower. After all, when it comes to housing and our homes, we all just want to feel secure.
Here’s how we fix it:
Soon as the gavel lands on the purchase of my first home, I’m a certainty to follow in the male tradition of turning into a fleshy sun-dial and spending the rest of my spare days stood like a stone in the yard, whispering things to myself like,
“You did good, Fred-man. Heh-heh… Yep. Mister… Mister Good.”
This sort of back-patting is as natural as the fear of being watched - which just means that if we are to introduce some second- and third- storied neighbours to the inner suburbs, we must take care to increase the NIMBY’s sense of control.
We propose that, whenever a new set of apartments get built, all surrounding neighbours’ lawns are fitted with a miniature replica of the suburb. Over this tiny village, the kimono-clad NIMBY could watch as a god might - if that god’s primary concern was the correct placement of bins on Thursday evenings.
For those NIMBYs without imagination, we simply take to the skies, allowing for the hasty and widespread construction of backyard crows nests. Finally at level with their apartment-dwelling neighbours, the NIMBYs might think this the golden age of suburban Sunday mornings - a nobling time in which a NIMBY, kimono-akimbo, could climb out from their beds, into the skies and watch as the sun rises over their hard-won kingdom.
You’re welcome, Australia.
