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Industry advocates have called for Code Red in Australia’s affordable housing market and said the Morrison government should urgently establish a national housing program as waiting lists for social housing across the country exceed supply.
In a new report released on Monday by the Australian Council for Social Services and the University of New South Wales, experts say the state’s housing programs simply don’t have the financial firepower to solve significantly the affordable housing crisis in Australia.
ACOSS Executive Director Cassandra Goldie said while state governments have done their best to protect residents across the country, the Commonwealth must now step in and make a “big push” to increase supply. affordable housing.
“The COVID crisis has put a strain on governments. Most state governments have done a remarkable job of protecting homeless people during COVID, â€said Dr. Goldie.
“But with such a chronic shortage of affordable housing, the resources they devote to social and affordable housing are simply not enough to meet current demand, let alone future needs,” she said.
“We need the federal government to step up and back in this space and do a big job to both close the massive social housing deficit and meet the future needs of a growing and aging population.”
The state’s social housing programs are patchy at best, according to the report. In Victoria and Queensland, construction of new social housing is expected to deliver 8,300 and 4,400 affordable housing units, respectively, over the next three years, while just over 400 new housing units are underway in New South Wales.
These combined programs are expected to add approximately 23,000 new homes to the public housing stock across the country over the next few years.
But experts say they won’t provide enough, as the number of households signing up on public waiting lists has risen to 155,000 nationwide, bringing the total number of affordable housing needed across the country to 400,000.
Housing stress has been compounded by a massive migration of remote work from urban to regional areas, putting additional pressure on an already unstable housing stock.
Michele Adair, CEO of one of NSW’s largest community housing providers, Housing Trust, and chair of the state’s top community housing body, said the circumstances are as much a human crisis as change. climate.
“We have such a shortage of affordable rental housing now, really our government should be having a conversation, ‘Well if we don’t fix it, who are we going to leave homeless? Adair told Business Insider Australia.
“It’s really so terrible. It really is. “
Adair said the situation is at its worst in Australia’s coastal areas, where the pressure added to the local housing market by remote workers is compounded by landlords looking to cash in while the housing market is hot.
The report found that regional rent increases now exceed those seen in metropolitan areas, most notably in NSW, Victoria and Queensland, where prices are rising 12.4%.
What’s more, according to the report, the proportion of rentals that low-income workers can afford has dropped sharply, from around 41% of all listings to just 33% in the last year alone.
This segment of the rental market is only expected to deteriorate further, as the National Rental Affordability Scheme – a program created in 2008 to build new rentals for essential workers and other disadvantaged workers at between 75% and 80% of rental rates. market – draws to an end.
Over the next three years, 22,000 affordable housing units available to working poor will be taken off the market, curbing rental stress nationwide.
Professor Hal Pawson, associate director of UNSW’s City Futures Research Center, said the market was in such a dire state that the Morrison government had little choice but to tackle it.
“A crucial part of any crisis is what lessons can be learned that could and should lead to policy reform. State governments have generally responded well in their emergency actions to help homeless people and protect vulnerable tenants during the worst of COVID, â€said Pawson.
“And to their credit, some have gone much further by pledging billions for short-term investments in social housing. But there are few signs of a positive legacy on systemic reforms and the re-engagement of the Commonwealth government is fundamentally needed to fix our housing system, â€he said.
Pawson and Dr Goldie both said the Commonwealth government urgently needs to consider increasing national social housing by at least 22,000 new homes, as well as a 50% increase in the aid payment for housing. Commonwealth rent.
It’s an issue the Morrison government has been reluctant to build on, and leaving a void that the Greens and Federal Labor Party have each tried to fill with election policies aimed at addressing the issue.
If the Greens manage to maintain the balance of power in the next election, they promise to build 1 million affordable homes for Australians who are both excluded from the market and in rental difficulty.
Under this policy, 125,000 homes would be part of a shared ownership program that would offer buyers between 50% and 75% of their home equity, through access to a low-interest loan.
750,000 additional new public housing units would be built under this program to reduce waiting lists and homelessness, in addition to 125,000 rental housing units with universal access.
Meanwhile, the Labor Party has pledged to create an off-budget $ 10 billion Australian housing fund to build 20,000 social housing units in its first five years, of which 4,000 will be allocated to fleeing women and children. domestic violence and low-income older women. who are at risk of homelessness.
About the Author
John Buckley is Senior Reporter at Business Insider Australia.
He has signatures in The Washington Post, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Saturday Paper, and VICE, among others. His stories focus on politics, finance, economics, technology and how each of them intersects with culture.
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