Shared living is basically a rite of passage for young people.
But for older people and couples, it is a profound attack upon dignity.
The federal government’s immigration-driven rental crisis is now so bad that older people and couples are being forced to live in share housing.
According to a University of Sydney study, rising rents will drive more older people to live in shared housing going forward.
The report examined demand and supply for share accommodation in Sydney, drawing upon online data from the Flatmates platform.
Below are key extracts from the report:
“Our study shows that a variety of people across their life course are now seeking share accommodation via online platforms in the absence of sufficient government responses to unmet housing need”.
“Sydney is Australia’s largest city, with over five million residents. Population growth has been buoyant at almost 2% over the past decade, driven mainly by international migration, until the national border closures in response to the COVID-19 Pandemic”.
“This sustained demand for share housing implies that in expensive cities such as Sydney, affordability pressures are sufficient to outweigh preferences for privacy, autonomy, or housing amenity”.
“A chronic shortage of affordable rental units, has meant that almost half of Sydney’s low-income earners experience rental stress, leading to an increase in the number of people sharing in group households as well as rising rates of overcrowding”.
“The presence of couples and groups in our sample highlights the diversity of people seeking share accommodation and implies a severe shortage of accommodation that is affordable or available even for dual-income households”.
“It is likely that future sharers will be more demographically diverse than in the past”.
The fact is that as long as the federal government pursues a ‘Big Australia’ immigration strategy, the nation will experience perpetual housing shortages.
Growing Australia’s population by between 400,000 and 500,000 people a year, as projected in the federal budget, necessarily means that housing demand will forever run ahead of supply, leading to more cramped living conditions and homelessness.
If the Albanese Government truly wanted to solve Australia’s housing crisis, it would moderate immigration so that demand more closely matches supply.
Otherwise, the rental crisis, group living, and homelessness will become a growing and permanent feature of Australia.
