Page 1644 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 July 2020
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Taken together, the statistics tell us that across Australia there are over 105,000 experiencing homelessness and 875,000 households experiencing housing stress. In the lowest two quintiles of combined household income, around 6,600 households found their rent or mortgage payments quite difficult or very difficult to pay in the past three months and, amongst those in Canberra, single parent families are particularly over-represented.
There is an annual Anglicare Australia rental affordability snapshot, and I refer to this year’s rental affordability snapshot from Anglicare. Each year, Anglicare surveys the private rental market to see if people on low incomes can afford to rent a home without putting themselves in financial stress and hardship. Housing affordability, land affordability, homelessness and rental stress are all part of the same puzzle, interlocking pieces that you cannot solve without addressing the root cause of the unaffordability. Anglicare, in their snapshot this year, have looked at suitable rental properties where land is expensive and the cost of building a house, whether expensive or not, combines to make a property unaffordable for purchase or for rental. This will have an impact, especially on the lowest or the second quintile.
Over the past few months in the ACT and Queanbeyan many families were affected by severe drought conditions. We had bushfires in the region, we had a hailstorm and then, more recently, we have had the COVID-19 pandemic, which included job losses and redundancies.
On the specifics of rental affordability in the ACT and Queanbeyan, for a couple with two children, one aged less than five and one aged less than 10, the number of affordable and appropriate properties is zero. For a single person with two children, one aged less than five and one aged less than 10, on a parenting payment single, the number of affordable and appropriate properties is zero. For a couple with no children and on the age pension, the number of appropriate properties is six. For a single person, with one child aged less than five, on a parenting payment single: none. The list goes on: for a couple on the minimum wage, getting FTB(A): eight properties. For a single person with two children, one aged less than five and one aged less than 10, and on the minimum wage: zero properties. For a single person on the minimum wage: 48 properties, or four per cent of available properties.
It is impossible for many people in our lowest quintiles, of which we have many, to find affordable rental properties. Despite the apparent affluence we see all around Canberra—and we have so many people who are struggling every day—the government’s policy levers are forcing the cost of land up artificially and this is having a flow-on effect not just to those who want to purchase a home, which is an aspiration of most young families these days, but to the rental market as well. It is not only the supply shortages but the affordability. It is related to the rate, the timeliness and the manner of the release of development ready land by the ACT government.
Back in 2015, the former Deputy Under Treasurer in the ACT for 12 years said:
The government could solve the crisis in housing affordability as simply as releasing a steady supply of land but it is not even meeting its own targets.
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