A roof over your head and food in your stomach are two keys of life.

Buying a house is one of the biggest decisions we can make.

Housing affordability has been an issue with every generation ... not just this one. Yet things have certainly changed in Australia and the gap between haves and have-nots seems to be widening.

My first house was a two-bedroom fibro place near the beach. The next was a new house in the bush but without window coverings, only timber floors and a gravel drive.

There wasn’t even any electricity for those first couple of years. It cost $40 a quarter for the gas fridge and stove, for the kerosene lamps – there was solar hot water and a generator to pump water or power the portable TV on special occasions.

After rushing home to watch Tracey Wickham swim at the Brisbane Commonwealth Games, by the time I had started the generator and run upstairs, all I got to watch was the Queen presenting her with the gold medal.

So what has changed? It would be too simple to blame the time it takes to bring new land developments to the market or the extra costs brought about by government taxes and charges.

After watching ABC-TV’s Difference of Opinion earlier this month, it became apparent there are a whole range of factors contributing to the fall in housing affordability.

Double-income households meant we could borrow more and build bigger and better homes. Houses got bigger at a time when households were getting smaller.

The desire to live on a large block in the suburbs meant more land needed to be opened up.

At the same time, governments became intent on balancing the budget, not investing in infrastructure for future generations.

It has become a case of user pays rather than borrowing against future returns.

Yet today’s developments must also cater for stricter planning controls to deal with environmental and quality-of-life issues.

There is a strong case for increasing living densities near existing or planned infrastructure such as railways, roads, bus services or tramways, water, power and gas supplies. Indeed, more could be done in the way of public transport to soften the dependence on cars at a time of rising fuel prices.

Finance has been relatively easy to obtain in recent years and interest rates have been back down to 1960s levels. Yet today’s workforce is faced with fewer full-time positions, with casual workers and sub-contractors finding it harder to qualify for loans.

Me? I’m going to get the bicycle out ...