Tracking Housing Cheats

A dilemma for any branch of government is the cost of enforcing regulations. It is easy to make new laws, but if some of the population ignores them, an LGA has to police them.

That is the case with secondary dwellings and studios that were approved a few years ago by BSC. Council contribution fees, approx $20-25K, were waived with the understanding that the infill dwellings would be used for affordable housing. It is true that many people took the money but still went ahead and listed them on the Short-Term Rental Accommodation market. This article outlines how the council is preparing to enforce these properties to be used for permanent rental, as agreed.

While they are talking about it, I wonder if they are aware of this new platform that does exactly that. Deckard.com is software that uses existing public and private domain data to track and find listing and leasing anomalies. The recent debate about the 90-day HL limit, yet to be decided on by the Independent Planning Commission, would do well to have had accurate data.

The Deckard name was inspired by the main protagonist in Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. The book was turned into one of my all-time favourite films, Blade Runner. The character Richard Deckard, played by Harrison Ford, is a bounty hunter in the future, locating, testing, and ultimately ‘retiring’ genetically engineered humanoid beings.