The assetization of housing in Australia: recent dynamics of lock-in and lock-out in a property-driven political economy

This chapter argues that the social sciences need to rethink how we approach questions of inequality and exclusion in Western countries in light of the housing boom of the past four decades. Focusing on the Australian case, the chapter show how, as part of a broader neoliberal shift, homes were transformed from ‘property’ into ‘assets’. It analyses the interaction of financial deregulation with fiscal policy and urban planning to make comprehensible that the steady rise of property prices is more than a temporary speculative bubble. The chapter looks at the formation of specific constituencies with an interest in the maintenance of that policy configuration, and it analyses how public policy has become locked into catering to a property-owning middle class that it is increasingly difficult to gain entrance to without parental assistance. It analyses the dynamics of this lock-in and lock-out with specific reference to the policies adopted in the response to the COVID-19 crisis, arguing that these were heavily geared to the interests of asset owners.