The Kiama Municipal Council has rolled over like a docile Labrador and won’t ask non-hosted short-term and vacant property owners to provide long-term rental accommodation to families, local workers, and the needy.

As the rich get richer from Airbnb and Stayz income and 100’s of Kiama holiday homes lie empty for much of the year; as intergenerational tension rises and rents soar like gulls over the Kiama lighthouse, where is the compassion and self-sacrifice Australians were renowned for?

The Council has no legislative power to compel owners to put their properties on the rental market. No government has the power to do that, which is right and proper.

But as the writer Anatole France said, “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”

We need to build more affordable houses but we also need to ask the owners to rent their properties for a couple of years through a reputable agency, so people can live and work locally.

Many owners would do so because it’s the right thing to do.

The Federal and state governments are spending billions of dollars on housing and social housing off the tax base, while thousands of non-hosted short term rentals and holiday homes lie vacant on the south coast.

Non-hosted STRA owners who ignore pleas for help, may find the taxation powers of the Federal government harder to ignore.

 M King