If WA is to house its growing population, it needs more construction workers, more varied dwellings and more people willing to downsize from underutilised properties, according to a Curtin University study.
In 2015, the state’s builders delivered 32,000 new dwellings. But now they would struggle to supply the minimum 20,000 homes needed just to keep up with population growth, according to the Building the Dream report from the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre released on Wednesday.
Separate homes make up 77 per cent of WA dwellings, 7 per cent higher than the rest of the country.Credit: Ross Swanborough
From the peak rate of construction mid-last decade to 2021, 40 per cent of WA’s building workforce left the industry. While 17 per cent retired, another 23 per cent switched industries — mainly to mining and manufacturing.
Professor Alan Duncan, the Centre’s director and a co-author of the report, said a suite of measures was needed to boost the building workforce, including subsidies for new apprentices, accelerating the approval of qualifications held by overseas workers and competitive relocation packages. The measures should be targeted towards trades in the highest demand, he said, including tilers, floor finishers, cabinetmakers and carpenters.
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While long queues form to view rental properties, the state is awash with homes bigger than the occupants require. There are 1.45 million spare bedrooms across the state, and many of them are not used for other purposes.
“The extraordinary rate of vacant housing capacity points to two major issues in WA housing,” Duncan said.
“The first is that we are failing to use our current housing stock efficiently, and the second is that the diversity of housing stock remains inadequate.”
The report recommends cutting stamp duty to reduce barriers to downsizing and boosting funding for social housing.