Rosie Wallis has been renting her entire adult life, and she doesn’t see that changing anytime soon.
Key points:
- As of the 2021 census, there are 2.8 million rental homes
- A YouGov poll found young tenants more likely to vote for Labor and Greens over coalition
- The Albanian government has promised to build 30,000 social and affordable housing for five years, but critics say more is needed.
He’s only 33, but he’s been paying other people’s mortgages for 15 years now.
To your frustration, shopping in Melbourne feels out of reach, even if prices fall.
“I think the average price of housing in the Melbourne subway is [almost] a million dollars: it’s pretty scary and it makes you feel really out of reach, ”he said.
Paying for the property he rents with his partner, Ash, and his four-year-old daughter, Julia, in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, accounts for a substantial portion of his income.
She works as an office manager and her partner is a car assembler.
They are also facing an increase in rent to renew the contract.
Rosie Wallis and her partner, Ash, spend 26% of their rental income. (Supplied)
“It ‘s about 26 percent of our revenue [that] goes for rent, another 13 per cent for childcare, ”he told ABC at 7.30am.
“It’s definitely hard to save and think about entering the market in the future.”
According to figures from the 2021 census just published, there are 2.8 million rental households, representing more than 30% of the population.
There were also nearly a million Australian homes that were unoccupied the night the census was conducted last August.
Many of the tenants are under increasing financial pressure. Rents are skyrocketing, having risen nearly 10% in the last 12 months, and low vacancy rates mean there is often little choice.
Eirene Tsolidis Noyce, of the Union of Tenants and Housing (RAHU) in Victoria, said the situation many tenants face was unacceptable.
Eirene Tsolidis Noyce says the market is getting tougher for tenants. (Supplied)
“The situation is pretty serious,” he said. “We’re not seeing wages rise, we’re not seeing income support rising and we’re seeing the market [prices] increase exponentially “.
Tenants are the “forgotten people”
Housing was a major issue during the federal election campaign, but many of the pledges focused on homebuyers.
Economist Brendan Coates of the independent think tank Grattan Institute argues that tenants did not receive the attention they deserve.
Brendan Coates says neither of the two major parties has offered substantial solutions for a third of Australians who rent. (ABC News: Peter Drought)
“Tenants have really been the forgotten people at the time of this election campaign, of the big parties,” he said.
“We haven’t really seen big policies from either side to address what is a big issue for a third of Australians.”
When Rosie Wallis voted for Labor in Deakin’s seat in this year’s federal election, housing policy was at the forefront of her mind.
As a tenant, she felt “ignored” and “taken for granted” during the campaign.
He preferred the Greens in the Senate and wants to see concrete results in housing policy.
“I certainly hope to see the Greens and the independents put more pressure on Labor on the affordability of housing,” he said.
The Greens MP campaigned on the accessibility of rent
Stephen Bates is one of three new Greens MPs to have won seats in major Brisbane parties.
The 29-year-old sees the campaign on rental accessibility as the key reason he is going to Canberra.
Stephen Bates was elected Brisbane MP in the 2022 federal election. (ABC News: Chris Gillette)
“[More than] 50 per cent of the Brisbane electorate rents, so it’s important that that representation is reflected in Parliament, so that I as a tenant and my whole immediate circle of friends are tenants, ”he said.
The Greens brought to the election an ambitious and expensive housing policy, to build one million affordable homes over 20 years.
Seven hundred and fifty thousand homes would be used for public and community housing, and 125,000 would be rental properties, at a cost of nearly $ 23 billion in a decade.
“What I would do is limit rents to 25 percent of your income or the market average, basically whatever it was lower, so that you can put that land on the market and give people access to housing,” he said. dir Bates.
More than 50 percent of Brisbane’s electorate rents, says Rep. Stephen Bates. (ABC News: Liz Pickering)
Economist Brendan Coates said the Greens’ proposal had merit, though he stressed that more work was needed to make sure the figures piled up.
“The scheme is very expensive and betting on this scale of intervention, you know, is a big change in the market,” he said.
However, he argued that increasing rental assistance from the Commonwealth was a higher priority than building so many houses.
“A better way beyond, for example, building the first 100,000 or 200,000 social housing units, is likely to be to increase rental assistance,” he said.
“This would provide an immediate benefit to the more than one million low-income tenants.”
The survey reveals that tenants supported Labor, Greens
YouGov polled nearly 6,000 voters during the election campaign.
This poll showed that young tenants strongly supported Labor and Greens over the coalition, YouGov data scientist Shaun Ratcliff said.
“Voters [who] those who do not have a home are almost half as likely to vote for the Coalition as voters [who] they own their own homes, ”he said.
“This is especially the case for younger voters, so those aged 18 to 34, those [who] The owners of their own homes, 30% or a little more, voted in favor of the Coalition.
“But, [for] Voters aged 18 to 34 [who] they are not homeowners, this figure was closer to 17 percent.
“The problem of the Coalition is the share of these young voters [who] renting or not having your own house goes up in every election. “
YouGov data scientist Shaun Ratcliff says the proportion of voters who rent or don’t own increases in every election. (AAP: Bianca De Marchi)
The YouGov poll also showed that 38% of older people who do not own their own home and are between 35 and 64 years old supported Labor, compared to only 24% of the Coalition.
High-income tenants also avoided the Coalition.
Ratcliff said the high proportion of tenants in key seats, such as Higgins in Melbourne and Wentworth in Sydney, hurt the Coalition.
“We have seats like Higgins in Melbourne, that was it [former treasurer] Peter Costello’s seat, ”he said.
“One of the reasons the Labor Party was able to win it in the Liberal Party was because there are a large number of tenants in the western part of the seat, younger tenants in particular.”
Supply and affordability policies
The Albanian government has pledged to build 30,000 social and affordable housing in five years.
Labor will also establish a board to try to increase supply and affordability.
Economist Brendan Coates calls it a big step forward, however, Ms. Noyce said much more was needed.
The Labor government plans to set up a council to try to increase the supply and affordability of homes. (ABC Radio Melbourne: Simon Leo Brown)
“Our members have voted in favor of expanding and improving public housing, and we need the federal government to fund it exponentially,” he said.
“We need to see urgent action to regulate the rental market.”
Brendan Coates said more reforms could help alleviate the housing crisis.
“There is an agenda that would make a difference materially, and it would be for the federal government to study paying states to increase the housing supply by setting planning rules that make it difficult to build homes where people want to live.” He said.
Tenant Rosie Wallis wants all political parties to do more to address the stark reality of staying out of home ownership.
“I would like them to make a policy that considers that many people who have rented their whole lives can rent their whole lives.”
Watch this 7.30pm story tonight on ABC TV and ABC iview.