Anglicare’s annual rental snapshot has been released with the report revealing a “shocking” collapse in the availability of affordable rental homes.
The Snapshot surveyed 45,895 rental listings across the nation and found:
- 345 rentals (0.8%) were affordable for a person earning a full-time minimum wage
- 162 rentals (0.4%) were affordable for a person on the Age Pension
- 66 rentals (0.1%) were affordable for a person on the Disability Support Pension
- 4 rentals, (0%) all sharehouses, were affordable for a person on JobSeeker
- 0 rentals (0%) were affordable for a person on Youth Allowance.
Commenting on the report, Anglicare Australia Executive Director Kasy Chambers noted that “each year, we think the market couldn’t get any worse. And each year, we’re shocked to see that it can”.
“This is the first time we have ever seen the number of affordable listings for a full-time minimum wage earner crash to below 1%”.
“Our social housing shortfall has now ballooned to 640,000 social homes across Australia”.
Meanwhile, President of Property Club, Kevin Young, has warned that the number of homeless people will “explode” given the nation is expected to receive 650,000 new migrants during an acute shortage of rental properties.
“Vacancy rates are already at near record lows in many parts of Australia, and as a result, rents have been increasing at more than 20%”, Young said.
“Property Club is predicting that if the Federal Government does not act quickly to boost the supply of rental houses, then rents will increase even higher over the coming year, and the number of homeless people will explode”.
Property club has projected that 190,000 net overseas migrants will land in Sydney by the end of 2023/24, whereas 172,000 will arrive in Melbourne. Both are extraordinary increases.
The truth of the matter is that Australia’s chronic rental shortage has been manufactured by the nation’s high immigration policy, which ensures housing demand always runs ahead of supply.
Unless immigration is moderated to historical average levels of below 100,000 (from nearly 400,000 currently), Australia’s housing crisis will remain a feature not a bug.
