When Peace Begins at Home

The ancient Romans had a concept they called pax domestica — domestic peace — which recognized that a nation’s stability begins not on battlefields or in parliaments, but in households. Two millennia later, Australia faces a stark truth: we cannot claim to be a peaceful society while housing insecurity corrodes the foundations of that peace for so many of our citizens.

This crisis manifests in numbers that have become grimly familiar: skyrocketing rents, plummeting vacancy rates, and housing waitlists that stretch beyond reasonable hope. But these statistics are merely the fever chart of a deeper ailment — a fundamental misalignment between what housing should be (a foundation for human dignity) and what it has become (a vehicle for wealth accumulation).

Stand on any street corner in Sydney, Melbourne, or Byron Bay, and you’ll witness this dissonance. The gleaming towers of investment properties, many with curtains perpetually drawn across darkened windows. The desperate scrolling of rental apps by young families. The hushed conversations about moving again, about schools changed mid-year, about elderly parents taking in adult children. About shelter — that most basic human need — becoming life’s dominant anxiety.

Through the lens of peace studies, this misalignment isn’t merely inefficient; it’s destabilizing. Peace isn’t simply the absence of violence but the presence of justice — a condition where people can live without the constant anxiety of displacement, the indignity of unaffordable housing, or the trauma of homelessness. When these conditions are systematically denied, what we experience isn’t just a market failure but a peace failure.

A proposed Ministry for Peace would approach housing not as an isolated policy domain but as critical infrastructure for social cohesion. It would ask: Does our housing system reduce fear and inequality, or amplify them? Does it create conditions for dignity and belonging, or for competition and exclusion? Does it support the wellbeing of future generations, or mortgage their prospects for short-term gain?

The Quantum Physics of Home: How Measurement Creates Reality

In quantum mechanics, the observer effect demonstrates that the act of measurement fundamentally alters the phenomenon being measured. What we choose to observe — and how we observe it — doesn’t simply record reality; it creates it.

This principle operates powerfully in housing. When we measure housing primarily through financial metrics — yield, capital appreciation, market value — we transform its fundamental nature. A dwelling valued primarily as an appreciating asset behaves differently than one valued as a cornerstone of community stability. A neighborhood evaluated for its investment potential develops differently than one measured by its livability, connectedness, or resilience.

The metrics we prioritize don’t just reflect our values; they manifest them. By measuring housing success through price growth rather than wellbeing outcomes, we have, observation by observation, created the very crisis we now face.

What might emerge if we measured differently? If we tracked housing stability instead of housing prices? If we celebrated neighborhoods not for gentrification but for integration? If our quarterly reports focused not on yield but on belonging?

This isn’t mere semantics. The act of measurement is an act of creation.

The Paradox of Plenty: Understanding the Data

Australia presents a peculiar paradox: a country with enough physical dwellings but not enough available homes. As of December 2024, Australia had approximately 11.29 million residential dwellings for roughly 10.71 million households — suggesting a surplus of over 580,000 homes. Yet this apparent abundance coexists with a housing crisis of unprecedented proportions.

This contradiction emerged not overnight but through decades of policy evolution. In the post-war years, housing was understood primarily as shelter — a foundational social good. Government programs like the War Service Homes Scheme and the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement viewed housing as essential infrastructure. Homeownership was promoted not primarily as wealth creation but as social stability.

The 1980s marked a pivotal shift. Financial deregulation, the introduction of capital gains tax concessions, and the reconceptualization of housing as an investment class fundamentally altered the system’s DNA. By the mid-1990s, negative gearing had transformed from a modest provision into a cornerstone of wealth-building strategy. Housing gradually morphed from a place to live into a financial instrument.

Today, this historical trajectory has culminated in several structural dysfunctions:

Vacant and Underutilized Properties: Prosper Australia’s research found nearly 100,000 homes in metropolitan Melbourne alone — approximately 5.2% of all dwellings — effectively empty or underutilized. This figure exceeds Victoria’s entire social housing waitlist by more than double. Extrapolated nationally, hundreds of thousands of dwellings sit vacant while people desperately seek shelter.

Short-Term Rental Conversion: Across Australia, more than 160,000 properties are listed on Airbnb alone, with the majority being entire homes unavailable for long-term residence. In Victoria, 63,000 dwellings function as short-term rentals, with nearly 50,000 being whole homes removed from the residential market. In coastal communities and tourism hotspots, this shift has transformed housing markets beyond recognition.

Historic Low Vacancy Rates: The national rental vacancy rate stands at 1.4% (November 2024), well below the 3% threshold considered necessary for a balanced market. Many capital cities and regional centers report vacancy rates below 1%, driving unprecedented rental increases.

Supply-Demand Mismatch: Despite the apparent surplus, new housing construction is failing to keep pace with population growth. Projections suggest Australia faces a deficit of over 103,000 homes by 2028, potentially growing to 165,000 by 2032 according to the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council.

Widespread Housing Stress: One in three low-income households in the private rental market spends more than 30% of their income on housing costs — the standard threshold for housing stress. Many pay significantly more, sacrificing other essentials to keep a roof overhead.

What emerges isn’t a shortage of physical structures but a profound misallocation of existing housing stock — driven by speculation, tax incentives that favor investors over residents, planning restrictions that limit supply where it’s most needed, and a decades-long disinvestment in social and affordable housing.

Housing Biodiversity: Beyond Monoculture Development

Ecologists have long understood that habitat fragmentation and monoculture threaten biodiversity. Ecological systems thrive not through uniformity but through diversity, connectedness, and resilience. A forest with a single tree species is vulnerable to collapse; one with diverse species and understory can withstand disease, fire, and climate fluctuation.

Our approach to housing has created the human equivalent of vulnerable monocultures. Neighborhoods of exclusively luxury apartments. Suburbs of identical detached homes. Public housing concentrated in isolated pockets. Each represents a form of habitat fragmentation that undermines community resilience.

Just as a healthy ecosystem needs not just trees but understory plants, pollinators, decomposers, and predators in balance, a healthy housing ecosystem requires diverse “species” of dwellings: starter homes and family houses, accessible units for elderly and disabled residents, community-oriented cohousing, and social housing integrated throughout. Most importantly, it needs connectivity — the social equivalent of wildlife corridors that allow movement, interaction, and mutual support.

This ecological perspective invites us to rethink housing not as a market of individual units but as an interconnected habitat where diversity creates stability. It suggests that mixing income levels, housing tenures, and building types within neighborhoods isn’t just socially desirable — it’s functionally necessary for community health.

When we understand housing as an ecosystem rather than a commodity, different questions emerge: Does this development enhance or diminish housing biodiversity? Does it create connection or isolation? Does it strengthen or weaken the overall resilience of the community habitat?

Root Causes: A System Designed for Assets, Not People

Australia’s housing crisis isn’t accidental; it’s the predictable outcome of policy choices that have systematically privileged property as an investment vehicle over its function as essential social infrastructure. Four structural forces stand out:

Planning and Zoning Restrictions: Highly restrictive planning rules across much of Australia limit housing supply, particularly in inner and middle-ring suburbs where jobs and services concentrate. NIMBYism, complex approval processes, and low-density zoning create a form of spatial injustice — where only those with higher incomes can live near opportunity.

Tax Incentives for Speculation: Australia’s tax system treats housing as a preferred investment class. Negative gearing allows investors to deduct property losses from taxable income, while Capital Gains Tax discounts halve the tax payable on investment property profits. Together, these concessions cost over $20 billion annually while fueling a system where the top 1% of taxpayers now own nearly 25% of all investment properties.

Short-Term Rental Proliferation: The rapid growth of platforms like Airbnb has transformed tens of thousands of potential homes into tourist accommodation. This conversion is particularly acute in areas already facing severe housing pressure, hollowing out communities and displacing long-term residents.

Disinvestment in Social Housing: Since the 1990s, public investment in social housing has declined dramatically. Social housing now accounts for less than 4% of all dwellings despite growing demand, with over 48,000 households on Victoria’s waitlist alone. This erosion of the safety net leaves vulnerable populations with nowhere to turn.

These forces don’t operate independently — they form an interlocking system that transforms housing from a foundation of peace into a source of insecurity, inequality, and intergenerational resentment.

Global Lessons: Housing Success Beyond Our Shores

Australia’s housing challenges aren’t unique, but our responses have been uniquely ineffective. Other nations offer valuable lessons in housing as peace infrastructure:

Vienna’s Social Housing: In Vienna, over 60% of residents live in municipally built, owned, or managed housing. Rather than creating ghettos, Vienna’s social housing is high-quality, energy-efficient, and integrated throughout the city. Most importantly, it’s available to middle-income as well as low-income households, preventing stigmatization and ensuring social mixing. The result? One of the world’s most livable cities with remarkably stable housing costs.

Singapore’s Housing Development Board: Singapore transformed from a housing crisis in the 1960s to a nation with 90% homeownership through its Housing Development Board. By maintaining public ownership of land while allowing private ownership of dwellings, Singapore prevented speculative excess while promoting stable communities. The model isn’t perfect — it can be rigid and controlling — but it demonstrates that widespread homeownership doesn’t require unrestrained markets.

Japan’s Construction-Friendly Zoning: While most of the developed world faces housing shortages, Tokyo has maintained remarkable affordability despite population growth. The secret? National zoning laws that prioritize housing supply and override local resistance to development. By allowing mid-density housing virtually everywhere and processing permissions quickly, Japan treats housing construction as essential infrastructure rather than a neighborhood negotiation.

Finland’s Housing First Approach: Finland is the only European country where homelessness has consistently declined, thanks to its “Housing First” philosophy. Rather than making housing conditional on behavioral change, Finland provides unconditional permanent housing as the foundation for addressing other challenges. The approach has proven more effective and ultimately less expensive than traditional shelter systems.

These international examples challenge common Australian assumptions. They demonstrate that market fundamentalism isn’t the only path to housing provision, that social housing can be desirable and high-quality, and that policy choices — not inevitable market forces — determine housing outcomes.

Counter Arguments: Wrestling with Legitimate Concerns

The peace-oriented housing approach outlined here faces legitimate counterarguments that deserve serious consideration.

Impact on Retirement Security: Many Australians rely on property investment for retirement security in a system that has encouraged this approach. Reforming negative gearing or capital gains concessions could potentially undermine retirement plans for middle-class investors caught in a system not of their making. This concern is legitimate, but it highlights a deeper problem: housing shouldn’t be our default retirement vehicle. A transition period and strengthened superannuation alternatives could mitigate these impacts.

Neighborhood Character and Density: Residents often resist densification, fearing loss of character, increased traffic, or strained infrastructure. These concerns aren’t inherently NIMBYism; they reflect genuine attachment to place and anxiety about change. However, sensitively designed medium-density housing actually enhances community interaction compared to car-dependent sprawl. The choice isn’t between neighborhood character and housing supply — it’s between thoughtful densification and continued exclusion.

Market Intervention Risks: Critics argue that government intervention in housing markets creates inefficiencies and unintended consequences. Singapore’s top-down approach has sometimes produced sterile environments, while rent control in cities like Stockholm has created decade-long waiting lists. These risks are real. But Australia’s current approach — treating housing primarily as a financial asset — has produced its own catastrophic market failures, including misallocation, inefficiency, and exclusion.

Costs of Social Housing: Expanding social housing requires significant public investment at a time of budget constraints. However, the downstream costs of housing insecurity — in healthcare, justice, welfare dependency, and lost productivity — far exceed the upfront investment. SGS Economics estimates that every dollar invested in social housing returns approximately two dollars in public benefit.

These counterarguments don’t invalidate the peace-oriented approach but remind us that transition requires careful design, honest tradeoffs, and genuine engagement with diverse perspectives.

The Cost of Inaction: Beyond Economics

The consequences of failing to address the housing crisis extend far beyond economic indicators. They manifest in the fraying of our social fabric:

Psychological Harm: Housing insecurity drives anxiety, depression, and trauma. Research from Beyond Blue confirms housing stress as a significant predictor of mental health challenges, particularly among young people and families. Children in unstable housing environments experience interrupted schooling, limited study spaces, and social withdrawal.

Family Breakdown: As affordability worsens, households compress. Multi-generational stress rises in spaces not designed for shared adult living. Younger generations, feeling locked out of opportunities their parents had, develop deepening resentment. The social contract between generations weakens.

Community Erosion: When people move frequently due to unaffordable rents or insecure tenure, social bonds break. Neighborhoods become transient, civic engagement drops, and the mutual care that defines community diminishes. Housing that encourages displacement rather than belonging undermines social cohesion.

Rising Homelessness: Every night, more than 122,000 Australians experience homelessness, with many more in “hidden homelessness” — sleeping in cars, couch surfing, or living in overcrowded conditions. Women and children fleeing violence are increasingly turned away from shelters due to capacity limitations. Besides the profound human cost, this drives increased emergency health system use, higher incarceration rates, and long-term welfare dependency.

Economic Stagnation: Unaffordable housing reduces workforce mobility — people can’t move to areas with employment opportunities if they can’t afford to live there. Young adults delay independence, family formation, and career advancement. Small businesses struggle to attract staff in unaffordable locations. A society cannot function when its essential workers — teachers, nurses, carers — are pushed to the margins.

Deepening Inequality: Perhaps most corrosively, the housing crisis drives a wedge through Australian society. Some own multiple properties; others cannot find secure shelter at any price. This divide becomes a cultural and emotional flashpoint — eroding trust in institutions and heightening polarization.

The magnitude of these costs forces a reckoning: are we willing to sacrifice social coherence, intergenerational justice, and community stability to preserve a system that primarily serves wealth accumulation? If we continue down this path, what kind of Australia will emerge? A country of housing haves and have-nots, segregated by wealth, divided by opportunity, and diminished by mistrust? Or will we choose a different future—one where housing serves its original purpose as the foundation of security, belonging, and peace?

Peace-Centered Solutions: A Policy Framework

Addressing Australia’s housing crisis requires more than incremental adjustments. It demands a holistic strategy that recognizes housing as fundamental to social peace. While some elements of this strategy are being pursued by state and federal governments, they must be strengthened and integrated into a comprehensive approach.

1. Reform Planning and Zoning Systems
Impact: High | Cost: Low | Foundational

The most immediate and cost-effective action is overhauling restrictive planning rules to unlock housing supply where it’s most needed.

Key Actions:

• Introduce national planning principles to coordinate state and local efforts
• Upzone inner- and middle-ring suburbs for medium-density housing
• Implement inclusionary zoning, mandating affordable housing quotas in new developments
• Prioritize transit-oriented development near jobs, services, and transportation

Peace Outcomes:

• Reduces spatial inequality
• Creates diverse, inclusive neighborhoods
• Shortens commutes and strengthens local connection

2. Regulate Short-Term Rentals
Impact: Medium-High | Cost: Very Low | Quick Wins

Short-term rental platforms have absorbed tens of thousands of dwellings from long-term housing stock.

Key Actions:

• Establish a national STRA register with licensing requirements for entire-home listings
• Empower local councils to set caps in high-pressure housing markets
• Introduce a levy on STRAs with funds redirected to affordable housing initiatives

Peace Outcomes:

• Returns housing stock to local residents
• Preserves community cohesion
• Balances tourism and residential needs

3. Reform Property Taxation
Impact: High | Cost: Net Positive | Structural Equity

Current tax settings favor speculative investment over housing access.

Key Actions:

• Phase out negative gearing for existing properties while maintaining incentives for new construction
• Reduce capital gains tax discounts for residential property investors
• Implement vacancy taxes on empty dwellings in high-demand areas
• Transition from stamp duty to broad-based land value taxation

Peace Outcomes:

• Reduces competition between investors and homebuyers
• Discourages property hoarding
• Levels intergenerational playing field

4. Scale Social and Affordable Housing
Impact: Transformational | Cost: High | Long-Term Investment

The private market alone cannot meet all housing needs, particularly for vulnerable populations.

Key Actions:

• Develop a 10-year national housing infrastructure strategy with sustained funding
• Prioritize partnerships with community housing providers and Indigenous-led organizations
• Utilize public land for mixed-income developments in well-located areas
• Design for community wellbeing, not just efficiency

Peace Outcomes:

• Creates pathways out of homelessness and poverty
• Provides safety and dignity for vulnerable populations
• Supports social cohesion through inclusive communities

5. Establish Data Transparency
Impact: System Enabler | Cost: Moderate | Accountability

Effective peacebuilding requires clear metrics and transparent reporting.

Key Actions:

• Create a national housing dashboard tracking affordability, security, vacancy, evictions, and wellbeing
• Develop a Housing Peace Index measuring housing’s impact on social stability
• Mandate public reporting on housing outcomes across jurisdictions

Peace Outcomes:

• Builds accountability across government levels
• Empowers communities with information
• Reinforces evidence-based policymaking

These initiatives must function as an integrated system, not isolated interventions. Planning reform creates capacity for growth; STRA regulation returns existing stock to residents; tax reform redirects investment toward socially beneficial outcomes; public housing ensures access for vulnerable populations; and data transparency tracks progress and maintains accountability.

Taking Action: From Policy to Practice

While systemic change requires government action, citizens need not wait passively for policy reform. Communities across Australia are already creating alternatives to housing-as-commodity:

Community Land Trusts: In Hobart, Melbourne, and Sydney, nascent community land trusts are separating land ownership from dwelling ownership to create permanently affordable housing. By holding land in a community trust while allowing individuals to own dwellings, these models prevent speculation while preserving stability.

Housing Cooperatives: From Murundaka Cohousing in Melbourne to Narara Ecovillage in NSW, cooperative housing models are creating intentional communities with shared resources, strong social bonds, and reduced environmental footprints. These communities demonstrate alternatives to both isolated private dwellings and institutional social housing.

Empty Homes Activation: Community organizations are working with owners of vacant properties to create secure tenancies for vulnerable residents, demonstrating win-win approaches to utilizing existing housing stock.

Local Planning Engagement: Resident groups from YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) movements are countering traditional opposition to development by advocating for well-designed density that creates inclusive, diverse neighborhoods.

Individuals can:

• Join or support community housing initiatives
• Engage constructively in local planning processes
• Vote for candidates who prioritize housing justice
• Challenge narratives that treat housing primarily as an investment vehicle
• Recognize housing as a system that requires collective action, not just individual choices

The peace-oriented approach to housing isn’t abstract theory — it’s emerging practice in communities nationwide. What’s needed now is to scale these innovations through policy support, public investment, and cultural shift.

Housing as Peacebuilding

Australia’s housing crisis represents more than a market dysfunction — it reveals a deeper misalignment between our stated values and our systems. A peaceful society cannot be built on a foundation of housing insecurity, speculative excess, and exclusion.

The quantum physics of housing reminds us that what we measure, we create. The ecological lens reveals that diversity and connection, not uniformity and isolation, create resilient communities. International examples demonstrate alternative paths forward, while community innovations show these alternatives aren’t utopian fantasies but emerging realities.

What’s required now is moral clarity and political courage to reimagine housing not as a vehicle for wealth creation but as essential infrastructure for social wellbeing. This isn’t a radical proposition; it’s a return to housing’s fundamental purpose — providing the stability from which individuals and communities can flourish.

A Ministry for Peace would approach housing not as a technical challenge but as a moral imperative. It would ask whether our policies reduce fear or amplify it, create belonging or erode it, build trust or undermine it. It would ensure that “home” remains not just an economic concept but a lived reality for all Australians.

The evidence is overwhelming, the solutions are clear, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. Australia has the resources, knowledge, and capacity to ensure that housing becomes a foundation for peace rather than a source of conflict. What remains is a simple question: Will we choose to act?

Because in the end, a nation truly at peace is one where everyone has a place to call home.