Social tragedy looming on rental crisis

By PAUL MCDONALD

The state of affordable housing is becoming increasingly desperate for those living on the margins. The evidence? Just take a look at the rental market.  $175 per week to rent a bunk bed in a two-bedroom house shared with eight other people. Or $100 per week to sleep on a blow-up bed or couch in a lounge room with six others. Or unbelievably, a bed in a corridor of a house for $140 per week.

Victoria is facing an unprecedented rental crisis which will have a catastrophic impact on the community if not fixed soon.

The latest Anglicare Australia Rental Affordability Snapshot shows that large numbers of lower-income and welfare-dependent singles and families have been shut out of the market.

It is time for the State Government and the community to turbo-boost measures to increase housing stock before the rental shortage transforms into more homelessness, more desperation and more social damage such as family violence.

The Snapshot defines rental affordability as rental properties that cost less than 30 per cent of a household’s total income, and appropriateness according to the number of bedrooms required for each household type. The 2016 Victorian Snapshot covered 30 Melbourne metropolitan local government areas and a selection of 14 regional and coastal areas. All rental data were captured on 2-3rd April.

Among the 17,330 private rental listings captured in Metropolitan Melbourne, only two properties were affordable and appropriate for a single person on the Parenting Payment. Only three properties were suitable for a couple with two children on the Newstart Allowance and only four properties were affordable and appropriate for single people on the Newstart Allowance, or for single people on the Disability Support Pension.

Share housing was the only option for single aged pensioners despite such housing being inappropriate for their needs. For singles on the minimum wage, share accommodation was by far the main rental option available.

For all young people subsisting on the Youth Allowance or Special Benefit Allowance, the rental market served zeroes. In today’s market they face spending more than 70 per cent of their income on rent. And let’s spare a thought for vulnerable young people exiting the State care system at 18 years who don’t stand a chance, providing yet another reason why care for this group needs to be extended through to 21 years.

The Royal Commission into Family Violence recently acknowledged the dismal state of rental affordability after reading Anglicare’s 2015 report. Now it’s even worse.

Footholds into any housing seems so far out of reach for those on either Commonwealth benefits or on a minimum wage that we are now seeing a social poverty crisis of growing proportions with long queues at emergency relief and material aid sites, and informal shared households folding due to conflict and violence due to overcrowding.

Action is needed now. There are plenty of levers at hand for governments to help swing the market to provide more options for households at the lower end. Increase head-leasing arrangements under which governments subsidises non-government agencies to buy large blocks of housing stock for rental to low-income people, provide incentive to developers to build more affordable stock. And governments need to address these pressures before it panders to the cries of the ‘worried well’ in the housing investment marketplace.

After the longest period of sustained economic growth in our history it is shameful that Australia cannot fulfil its responsibility of housing our own. Repeated calls over the last decade to the Federal and state governments to address this crisis has fallen on deaf ears. Though they seem willing to jump at the chance for costly royal commissions on unions or banks, it is housing affordability that is crying out for a Royal Commission to ensure the profound social ramifications as a result of housing stress can be avoided. Governments need only to look at the effectiveness of the Royal Commissions into child sexual abuse or family violence to see what outcomes can be achieved.

It remains to be seen whether the forthcoming Federal election is able to show that we understand the social issues faced by this country, and are prepared to address them. The thousands of low income individuals, children and families in housing stress are certainly hoping for this, as they head unassisted towards the housing precipice.

 

Paul McDonald is CEO of Anglicare Victoria