Anglicare Australia has made an urgent plea to boost social and affordable homes across the country. The call is made as Anglicare Australia releases its annual Rental Affordability Snapshot.
The Snapshot surveyed 45,895 rental listings across Australia and found that:
- 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.
“Each year, we think the market couldn’t get any worse. And each year, we’re shocked to see that it can,” said Anglicare Australia Executive Director Kasy Chambers.
“This year’s result is the worst we have ever seen for a person on the minimum wage, with affordability halving over the last year. 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 percent.
“If full-time wage earners are doing it tough, then people on Centrelink payments don’t stand a chance. Less than 1 percent of rentals are affordable for a person on the age or disability support pensions. For a person out of work, it’s 0 percent – and that includes the highest rate of rent assistance.”
Ms Chambers said that the best way to tackle the rental crisis is to build social and affordable rentals.
“The private market is failing people on low incomes. Even though Australia has built a record number of homes over the last ten years, rents keep soaring. The best way to make rentals more affordable is to build social and affordable homes. Building general homes and hoping affordability will trickle down just isn’t working.
“Our social housing shortfall has now ballooned to 640,000 social homes across Australia. Ending this shortfall will help people in the most severe rental stress, and free up the cheapest rentals for everybody else.
“If we do not tackle this shortfall, we do not stand a chance of ending rental stress in Australia. “We’re calling on the government to build social homes in the next Budget – and make sure everyone has a place to call home,” Ms Chambers said.