@mogga - I don't know about 'engineered' but to me the principal madness seems to be that 'housing' has become big business, as well as a means to create wealth for those who already have some wealth in the beginning, with all the tax deduction etc, - I can sing you a song too, of the many unpleasant experiences we had had with landlords up to that stage, when we lived in really sub-standard accommodation in the same street where my husband found this 'beautiful house' (as he put it, to me it was nothing but a beggar's cottage, but he could see the 'finished item' - always could) - the 'landlord' we rented from had us sign a rental agreement where every 'b....y' ex-cooky jar which served as a cup or container was listed as 'property' and we weren't allowed to damage it let alone steal it - I could not believe the list of 'precious' items. Alright, he was a little mad, but similar experiences in Sydney, too - and the housing was always shabby and expensive, so not much has changed. I still remember this flea-infested house we moved in, owned by a clergyman (in Como) - dunny at the back, no bathroom, shower to speak of . . . but I loved the 'garden' - had my second child there - hubby fixed a lot of things.
We then - 10 years latermoved from Sydney to Western Australia, because a friend motivated us to move.
As long as housing and loans towards building more houses (beyond the family home) as 'investment' property is a means of creating wealth, we will have expensive and shoddy housing - often unfinished too, because the jerry-builders have gone broke - happened to one of my daughters, and their deposit was lost too.
Government needs to step in big -time. Read up on 'Red Vienna' in the 1920s and the solid government housing they built - I grew up in one of them and it was perfectly decent, with a mix of good and bad, there were even some middle-class enterpreneurial families living in them. The guy in the flat below us owned a couple of taxis. Then below him, again, lived a rough and drunken gipsy family - they all managed to ignore each other and say 'hello' when meeting on the stairs.
You grew up getting to know all sorts of lifestyles around you and didn't need trashy TV series on the facts of life.
Maybe allowing people in, who have the needed skills might be a good start - happened here in W.A. after WWII.
