Since the federal budget, auction clearance rates have fallen and house prices have gone sideways.

The slow-down in the housing market is being blamed on interest rate increases, and the government’s tax changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax announced in the budget.

Pundits on radio and in newspapers are starting to argue it’s a bad thing. But perhaps the changes are working as planned and making housing more affordable at a time when poverty and homelessness are on the rise.

As a country we need to ask a very obvious, but often ignored question – what is housing for? Is it a safe and secure place for people to live, or is it a place to make a small minority of people rich?

The answer is important because the housing market in the past two decades has shown that it can’t be both.

For 25 years, investors have flooded into the market, pushing up prices, outbidding first-home buyers and making housing less affordable. Higher house prices mean bigger capital gains when an owner sells, which just attracts more investors.

But the tax changes are designed to discourage the very investors who have been pushing up prices, and recent evidence suggests it is........

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