The Conversation

The rental housing crisis is hurting our most vulnerable and demands a range of solutions (but capping rents isn’t one of them)

Andrew Beer, University of South Australia and Emma Baker, University of Adelaide

The people with the worst health often live in rental homes likely to make them sicker, and poor policy could make it worse.

Labor and the Greens don’t get along. Here’s why

Mark Kenny, Australian National University

As they fight for the affections of the same voters, the two parties have engaged in a particularly nasty debate over housing.

Albanese government tackles housing crisis on 3 fronts, but there’s still more to do

Hal Pawson, UNSW Sydney

Three bills to go before parliament confirm the Albanese government is restoring the Commonwealth to a leadership role on housing issues. But there are still gaps in its approach.

If your landlord wants to increase your rent, here are your rights

Brendan Grigg, Flinders University and Hossein Esmaeili, Flinders University

Your rights as a renter in Australia vary according to where you live. Here’s what you need to know.

‘We’ve all done the right things’: in Under Cover, older women tell their stories of becoming homeless

Zoe Goodall, Swinburne University of Technology; Margaret Reynolds, Swinburne University of Technology; Piret Veeroja, Swinburne University of Technology, and Wendy Stone, Swinburne University of Technology

A new Australian documentary gives voice to the women in urgent need of policy action on housing insecurity and homelessness.

Tiny and alternate houses can help ease Australia’s rental affordability crisis

Heather Shearer, Griffith University and Paul Burton, Griffith University

Relaxing restrictions on small and non-traditional houses can help to increase the supply of affordable rental housing.

2.6 million face poverty when COVID payments end, rental stress soars

Simone Casey, RMIT University and Liss Ralston, Swinburne University of Technology

JobKeeper and the COVID Supplement to JobSeeker benefits will be gone in a week. The combined effect will be to halve some recipients’ incomes and the rent they can afford.

As one gets out, another gets in: thousands of students are ‘hot-bedding’

Alan Morris, University of Technology Sydney; Catherine Hastings, University of Technology Sydney, and Gaby Ramia, University of Sydney

Even before the pandemic added to their financial stresses, a survey of international students suggests more than 20,000 were renting beds that are available to them for only certain hours.

What did COVID do to rental markets? Rents fell as owners switched from Airbnb

Caitlin Buckle, University of Sydney; Nicole Gurran, University of Sydney; Patrick Harris, UNSW Sydney; Peter Phibbs, University of Sydney; Rashi Shrivastava, University of Sydney, and Tess Lea, University of Sydney

Analysis of online listings on common online platforms shows even modest reductions in Airbnb listings increased supply of longer-term rentals. The result was lower local rents.

Cutting JobSeeker payments will cause crippling rental stress in our cities

Simone Casey, RMIT University and Liss Ralston, Swinburne University of Technology

The impacts of the pandemic on jobs and incomes have been so widespread and severe that low-income households can afford very few properties despite rents falling in some parts of our capital cities.

‘Uprooting, no matter how small a plant you are, is a trauma’: older women renters are struggling

Emma Power, Western Sydney University

High rents and insecurity are constant sources of financial and emotional stress for low-income women. They describe what it’s like struggling to survive and being one step away from being homeless.

Rents can and should be reduced or suspended for the coronavirus pandemic

Chris Martin, UNSW Sydney

Representatives of tenants and agents agree that leaving individuals to try to sort out rent reductions has created a mess. It calls for government to step in to look after both renters and landlords.

Rent strikers from Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood and fellow protesters gather outside Social Justices Tribunal Ontario in February, 2018. The group refused to pay rent after the landlord applied for an increase in rents. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

Coronavirus pandemic is an opportunity to create affordable cities

Howard Ramos, Dalhousie University; Alan Walks, University of Toronto, and Jill L Grant, Dalhousie University

It’s time to reset Canada’s housing policies to make cities more affordable and more socially just places to live.

As coronavirus hits holiday lettings, a shift to longer rentals could help many of us

Myfan Jordan, La Trobe University

Platforms like Airbnb have been blamed for reducing the rental housing supply and pushing up rents. But investors seeking more security might now want to offer their properties to long-term renters.

Morrison government assistant minister Luke Howarth argues that finding jobs for people in social housing will help free up dwellings for other people on the waiting list. Mick Tsikas/AAP

As simple as finding a job? Getting people out of social housing is much more complex than that

Chris Hartley, UNSW Sydney and Kathleen Flanagan, University of Tasmania

Helping tenants find work supposedly creates a pathway into private rental housing, freeing up social housing for others. Private rental costs and the situations of many tenants make that unrealistic.

The Grattan Institute has condemned the National Rental Affordability Scheme as a $1 billion windfall to developers. www.shutterstock.com

Don’t tear it down: the idea behind Labor’s National Rental Affordability Scheme is worth saving

Marcus Luigi Spiller, The University of Melbourne

Labor’s rental affordability scheme had its problems, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Even when sharing a house, the average cost of rent means very little is left over from the Newstart allowance for food and living costs. shutterstock.com

City share-house rents eat up most of Newstart, leaving less than $100 a week to live on

Simone Casey, RMIT University and Liss Ralston, Swinburne University of Technology

Once rent is paid, having to live on only $14 a day doesn’t cover the costs of job seeking. The evidence of the need to increase Newstart and Rent Allowance is overwhelming.

Beds for rent: a shared room listed in Castlereagh Street, Sydney. www.gumtree.com.au

Tracking the rise of room sharing and overcrowding, and what it means for housing in Australia

Zahra Nasreen, Macquarie University and Kristian Ruming, Macquarie University

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 leader Bill Shorten has announced a policy based on a solid principle of fairness, but with a second-best model of delivering social housing. Julian Smith/AAP

Labor’s housing pledge is welcome, but direct investment in social housing would improve it

Julie Lawson, RMIT University and Laurence Troy, UNSW Sydney

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.

Many tenants who lit up their apartments in the ‘We Live Here’ campaign see redevelopment of the Waterloo housing estate as a ploy to move them out of the area. Aaron Bunch/AAP

We still live here: public housing tenants fight for their place in the city

Pratichi Chatterjee, University of Sydney; Alistair Sisson, University of Sydney; Jenna Condie, Western Sydney University, and Laura Wynne, University of Tasmania

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.

Airbnb’s likely impacts on people and their responses to it are related to their status as property owners, investors, prospective buyers or tenants. Justin Lane/EPA

Who wins and who loses when platforms like Airbnb disrupt housing? And how do you regulate it?

Laura Crommelin, UNSW Sydney; Chris Martin, UNSW Sydney; Laurence Troy, UNSW Sydney, and Sharon Parkinson, Swinburne University of Technology

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.

People should be able to feel at home regardless of whether they own the place they live in. Halfpoint/Shutterstock

Ideas of home and ownership in Australia might explain the neglect of renters’ rights

Bronwyn Bate, Western Sydney University

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.

Vancouver has scaled up delivery of affordable social housing to about 15 times as much as Melbourne over the past three years. Shutterstock

Ten lessons from cities that have risen to the affordable housing challenge

Carolyn Whitzman, The University of Melbourne; Katrina Raynor, The University of Melbourne, and Matthew Palm, The University of Melbourne

Cities overseas that have been able to overcome the affordable housing challenges facing cities like Melbourne have adopted a coordinated and systemic approach to scaling up solutions that work.

The return of the historic problem of overcrowded dwellings points to a need in Australia for better understanding of the causes and regulatory responses. Jacob Riis (1889)

Overcrowded housing looms as a challenge for our cities

Shanaka Herath, University of Wollongong and Rebecca Bentley, The University of Melbourne

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?

Housing is just one of the essentials in household budgets and it’s when there’s no way to manage all these costs that financial stress really sets in. Emma Baker

Housing affordability stress affects one in nine households, but which ones are really struggling?

Lyrian Daniel, University of Adelaide and Emma Baker, University of Adelaide

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.