The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Anatole France (1844 - 1924), The Red Lily, 1894, chapter 7
Home shortage myth Sunanda Creagh May 27, 2008 Latest related coverage
Audio slideshow: Over 120,000 buildings in Sydney stand vacant, but there are advocates for housing people in these spaces.
Empty homes now for all to see
Empty dwellings in a city desperate for places to live
Insurance threat driving builders away
Pop-up graphic: Lost in space Other related coverage
Home shortage myth website crashes
A Wikipedia-style site that allows users to map the number of empty buildings in Australia has crashed after an overwhelming response from the public.
Daniel Cox, the creator of http://bubblepedia.net.au said he was racing to fix the site in spare moments between his professional duties as a specialist anaesthetist.
"Basically, there is currently way too much traffic for the server. There have been about 50 new members who have joined already and about 140 people on the site at any one time this morning," Dr Cox said.
"The host has said there's so much interest it's crashing other websites on its server and not many people have been able to upload photos because of the amount of traffic it's created."
Dr Cox said he created the website because "the papers were saying rents were going through the roof but where I lived in Blakehurst, there was at least one empty house in every street".
The website, started a month ago and featured in today's Herald, allows users to register and use Google Maps to find the co-ordinates of the unused building they have found, and upload it directly.
"Since the article, a lot of people have emailed me saying positive things about the site," he said.
Dr Cox says the site should be up and running properly within a week but interested parties can email him at dan at bubblepedia.net.au in the meantime.
Tax measures, such as negative gearing, encouraged speculators to buy property without bothering to use the building to put a roof over someone's head, he said.
"To them, these houses are just assets. People are not renting them out because they are not interested in the income any more, they are just interested in the assets," he said.
NSW shadow minister for fair trading Catherine Cusack said changes to tenancy law could encourage some owners of vacant properties to bring in tenants.
"If even 5 per cent of that 120,000 properties could have tenants even on short-term leases, that would provide immediate relief and drive down prices in the rental market," she said.
"A lot of property owners are concerned it will take a long time to get a tenant out once an eviction order has been issued by the Consumer Trader and Tenancy Tribunal. That process needs to be streamlined."
She called on the Minister for Fair Trading, Linda Burney, to release a report outlining a platform of reforms to tenancy law.
The Herald revealed on Monday that census figures showed there were more than 120,000 houses lying vacant.
The carbon atoms in your body were forged inside a star somewhere, billions of years ago. http://www.iww.org.au/
Get the name you always wanted with the new y7mail email address. www.yahoo7.com.au/mail