SMH columnist, academic, and immigration lunatic, Jenna Price, has offered a “deranged” solution to Australia’s rental crisis: forcing households to rent out their spare bedrooms:
My neighbours will hate me, but I must write this, for the good of the nation and the future of our children. Early this week, I crept down our short inner-west street with a notebook and conducted a stealth audit of bedroom secrets. I’ve lived here 30 years. I know what goes down.
By my count, there are 34 spare bedrooms in my street, 34 rooms with no one sleeping in them (unless you count the odd visiting relative). If the state seized control of those bedrooms, we could ease the housing shortage. I haven’t quite figured out the best way to make it happen – sticks or carrots – but we must act.
Is this a deranged idea? Sure – but what else have you got for a country where homeless rates are soaring, interest rates are soaring, rents are soaring. We do not have enough homes for people…
There is one immediate fix for the housing crisis: nationalise our 13 million spare bedrooms.
When confronted on Twitter about cutting immigration instead, Jenna Price immediately played the “but we’re all migrants” card:
Look, if people want to let their bedrooms that’s up to them, not some migration maniac that has no clue about the economics of what is happening.
The Albanese Government has deliberately engineered the biggest immigration program in this nation’s history via:
- Increasing the permanent migrant intake by 35,000 to 195,000;
- Increasing the duration of post-study work visas for international students by two years in areas of skills shortages;
- Allowing international students to work unlimited hours while studying, effectively turning student visas into unrestricted work visas; and
- Allocating $36 million dollars and 500 extra staff to clear visa backlogs, thereby accelerating international arrivals.
These reforms pushed temporary visa arrivals to record levels in the latter part of 2022, driven by international students seeking work and permanent residency:
This week, it was revealed that a record 360,000 visa applications were lodged overseas by students last year, with the federal government also processing a record number of applications since the middle of 2022.
Australia’s rental shortage will be further inflamed by the Chinese Government’s directive that it will no longer recognise foreign academic degrees and diplomas if the study was conducted online.
This decision is expected to see up to 50,000 Chinese students land in Australia over the next few months, equating to roughly one-third of available rentals in both Sydney and Melbourne.
The upshot is that Australia’s immigration intake will be the largest on record this year by a very wide margin, which will turn the rental crisis into an outright national disaster.
There is no end in sight to this madness.
The Intergenerational Report projected that Australia’s population will grow by 13.1 million people (50%) in just 40 years on the back of extreme net overseas migration of 235,000 a year.
That population increase is the equivalent of adding a combined Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to Australia’s current population.
It will ensure that housing demand forever overruns supply (not to mention rampant wage theft and crush loading of public amenities).
Yet moderating immigration back to long-run and still generous historical levels of around 100,000 people a year is never even considered by migration maniacs like Jenna Price. They don’t see Australia or its borders at all, only that Australians are responsible for every human being on the planet.
If policymakers genuinely want to fix Australia’s housing (rental) crisis, cut immigration!
Otherwise, housing shortages will become a permanent feature of Australia.
