People on the minimum wage can afford only 2% of private rentals and only 1% if on the pension. Affordable housing requirements are often mandatory overseas, but Victoria is relying on negotiation.
Having quality housing matters. What’s standing in the way of ensuring every Australian has housing that meets basic comfort and health standards? And how can we overcome these problems?
With Australian city rents too high for low-income earners, increasing numbers are forced to share houses or rooms or to live in options like ‘beds in sheds’ and other illegal dwellings.
The problems with housing systems in Australia and similar countries run deep. Solutions depend on a fundamental rethink of our approach to housing and its central place in our lives and the economy.
Living in shared rooms is on the rise, because it’s more affordable – and more profitable for landlords. But it’s also a more precarious, often overcrowded and poorly regulated form of housing.
Labor has made a substantial commitment to tackling inequality in Australia, but has taken a second-best approach to overcoming the huge shortfall of social housing.
Asian Australians experience high levels of racism. Almost six in ten Asia-born Australians report having had experiences of discrimination when trying to rent or buy housing.
Working-class residents of Waterloo have a history of resisting threats to their community. Many tenants see the redevelopment of public housing as state-led gentrification to squeeze them out.
Short-term letting via digital platforms benefits some in the market at the expense of others. Closer regulation might be needed in Melbourne and Sydney, where a permissive approach prevails.
Renting a house shouldn’t mean it’s not home. Until we change our meaning of home by separating it from ownership, we will never be able to “fix” Australia’s housing crisis.
Governments should stop offering false hopes and pandering to NIMBY pressures. As well as increased public and private housing supply, growing cities need well-designed higher-density development.
Proposed changes to NSW rental tenancy law are an improvement, but do not end the excessive rent increases and “no grounds” evictions that put renters – and older women in particular – at risk.
Residential tenancy reforms are before the NSW parliament, but a key reform is missing. In this open letter, housing academics call for an end to landlords’ power to terminate leases with ‘no grounds’.
Until now most people have eventually owned a home. But two trends – falling ownership and a growing aged population – will put the budgets of retirees and government under real pressure.
Property prices have soared in the past decade, but much more modest increases in rent, with the exception of Sydney, suggest less of an imbalance of supply and demand for housing as a place to live.
The standards we use today were designed to help avoid the overcrowded housing that blighted cities in the past. But severe overcrowding is again on the rise, so what needs to be done?
One problem with Airbnb is that it isn’t transparent about how many properties are truly ‘shared’ and how many are just part of a letting business. Regulators need to know that to manage the impacts.
Tasmania has an estimated rental housing shortfall of 29,200 households across the state. Especially in disadvantaged rural areas, local councils have had to step in to help house residents locally.
Housing affordability is one of Australia’s great unsolved problems. Some households can make adjustments to cover high housing costs, but the ones deprived of essentials are under real stress.
Professor of Social Epidemiology and Director of the Centre of Research Excellence in Healthy Housing at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne
Professor; School of Economics, Finance and Property, and Director, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Curtin Research Centre, Curtin University