The last 24 public housing tenants holding out against eviction from Millers Point, Dawes Point and the Sirius Building still hope the government may show some compassion.
Households are not competing on equal terms in the private rental market – their perceptions of insecurity vary according to their means, location and reasons for renting.
April Fonti/AAP
Private renters’ security of tenure in Australia has less legal protection than in other countries with high private rental rates. A new study reveals mixed responses to this state of uncertainty.
The Rental Vulnerability Index for Queensland shows the cumulative impact of factors affecting renters across the state.
City Futures Research Centre
Almost nowhere in our capital cities can low-income households – and those on average incomes in Sydney – afford the median rent. Mapping rental vulnerability finds it in regional areas too.
More competition between renters won’t help affordability.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
In a market already tilted in favour of landlords, these apps could further push up prices.
Restoring and expanding Australia’s run-down public housing stocks will need an increase in funding on top of the reforms in the budget.
Dan Himbrechts/AAP
The budget is pushing for a much-needed reboot of the social housing sector. What it isn’t offering is extra funding to renew and expand run-down housing stocks.
Even properties at the lower end of the market are beyond the means of most people on low fixed incomes.
Tom Rabe/AAP
Only a small proportion of housing is affordable for low-income earners, while people on Newstart or Youth Allowance don’t have any affordable options at all.
Treasurer Scott Morrison is eyeing bond aggregation as a way to finance social housing, but government funding is still needed under that model.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
In the second part of our review of what The Conversation experts have to say about housing, we focus on affordability, social housing and what government can do about a growing crisis.
To meet the needs of lower-income households, housing should be both affordable and located near public transport and other services.
Graeme Bartlett/Wikimedia
Victoria has been lagging behind other states in developing an affordable housing strategy. Now that one has been released, how well does it meet the needs of households on lower incomes?
Any attempt to improve security for tenants should not deprive them, or their landlords, of the flexibility that many also want.
David Crosling/AAP
Any attempt to improve security for tenants should not deprive them, or their landlords, of the flexibility that many also want. The key problem is landlords’ ability to give notice without a reason.
The homeless people evicted from Flinders Street in Melbourne’s CBD are only the tip of the iceberg of the housing crisis in Victoria.
Joe Castro/AAP
Weak state policies, which lack clear targets and mechanisms for providing more and better affordable housing, are part of the problem. Victoria still doesn’t have an affordable housing strategy.
On current trends, renters will eventually outnumber home buyers, representing a fundamental shift in how the economy and wealth generation work.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
Generation Rent may force a complete rethinking of home ownership as a basis of our housing systems. Rather than representing security, these housing markets make us vulnerable.
Renters worry that asking their landlords for better insulated homes could cause a rent hike.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian needs to shed the Treasury view of housing construction as a silver bullet and back former premier Mike Baird’s social and affordable housing program.
Nikki Short/AAP
The new NSW premier is right to identify housing affordability as a priority for the people and economy of Sydney. It’s not just housing supply that’s the problem – action is needed on many fronts.
The increasing proportion of children living in housing-related poverty confronts us with the question: what will we do about it?
Ollyy/shutterstock.com
Many children are living in low-income families that struggle to pay the rent to keep a roof over their heads. Unaffordable housing is fuelling childhood poverty, so where is the policy response?
The growing numbers of pensioners in private rental accommodation use much of their income to pay for housing.
Alan Porritt/AAP
For the increasing proportion of people living in private rental accommodation who can expect to be dependent on the age pension, the prospects of financial and housing insecurity are grim.
If the sharing economy is here to stay, planners and designers must respond with imagination to spread the positive effects of the tourism economy for the benefit of residents as well as tourists.
Only Tasmania and South Australia have introduced legislation that provides for minimum standards in rental properties.
Huguette Roe from www.shutterstock.com
With tenancy laws under review, a ruling that landlords must maintain residential premises in good repair even if dilapidated is hailed as a ‘landmark’ decision. That tells us reform is needed.
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