Anglicare Australia has released new research showing that essential workers are being priced out of the rental market across the country.
The Rental Affordability Snapshot: Essential Workers Report surveyed more than 51,000 rental listings and tested them against the wages of sixteen essential occupations.
Released as part of Anti-Poverty Week, it found that:
- 1,117 rentals (2.3%) were affordable for an ambulance officer
- 850 rentals (1.7%) were affordable for an aged care worker
- 754 rentals (1.5%) were affordable for a nurse
- 575 rentals (1.1%) were affordable for a construction worker
- 417 rentals (0.8%) were affordable for an early childhood educator
- 417 rentals (0.8%) were affordable for a hospitality worker.
- In most regional areas, less than 5 percent of rentals were affordable for a cleaner.
“It is a national disgrace that the people we all rely on – nurses, teachers, care workers, cleaners – cannot afford a secure place to live,” Anglicare Australia Executive Director Kasy Chambers said.
“This report shows that even full-time workers in critical jobs are locked out of most rentals. In many parts of the country, affordability has gone backwards. A hospitality worker could not afford a single property in the ACT, only five in the Northern Territory, and just 80 across the whole of Victoria.
“These results show that the housing crisis is now hurting the people who hold our communities together. If they cannot afford to live where they work, then schools, hospitals, and aged care homes will struggle to keep running.”
Ms Chambers said governments cannot keep leaving housing to the private market.
“For decades, governments have walked away from providing housing and instead propped up private investors with billions in tax concessions. The result is a system that works for investors, but shuts out everyone else,” Ms Chambers said.
“The solution is clear. We need tax reform to stop pushing up the cost of housing. We need to build at least 25,000 new public and community homes each year – rentals that essential workers can actually afford. And we need stronger protections for renters, so people are not left at the mercy of an unfair system.
“The housing crisis is not an accident. It is the result of choices. These results are shocking, but they are also an opportunity for governments to change course and ensure that everyone has a safe, affordable home.”
The report includes state and regional data.
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Disgusting, and an ongoing political, social, economic ulcer. We cannot build anything much to compete, to maintain skills, to be independent, but might buy fantasy subs once they become clearly obsolete. DUH!! With three levels of government, problems arise and are not solved. The private profiteers never mention that this is how they like it, slow and lucrative. A rich nation cannot house its people…
I find it strange that “cleaners” and “teachers” had a better chance of getting “affordable rentals” than other essential workers!! Are “teachers” and “cleaners” paid more than other essential workers?
This whole report is strange, very strange, there is a housing shortage that impacts on all Australians and has done so for many years. So what can be done about it? The bulk of housing is provided by private capital and is built to turn a dollar. So just how do you encourage the private investor to build more housing?
My Daughter a Nurse has to travel from the Southern outskirts of Sydney, to work in Balmain Hospital. On a train at 5 15am to city ,Dad ME takes her to station, we have no bus at that time to station.. and then a bus, and do the whole thing in reverse coming home. And thats just morning shifts. Agree it would be nice if she could afford to live closer. But who can afford $700 a week for something that is not a hovel.
Remove negative gearing on more than one property – suddenly a bunch of places will be for sale, the market will drop and landlords will find they can charge less. AS WELL, every state government needs to get back in the business of housing and build for low income renters. We in Tas have many subdivisions that were built from the 50s onwards, now mostly in private ownership. Some are still available for low incomes but not enough !!
In America, the 2024 poverty rate was 10.6% (35.9 million) of total population, and even with social security assistance there is still a shortage of 7.1 million affordable dwellings. In Oz 2023 the poverty rate was 14.2% (3.7 million), its official shortage is 152,000 affordable dwellings, but experts put the figure between 200,000 – 300,000 shortfall.
In 1990, an American associate (specialist) working in Dallas, to afford reasonable housing, had a 2 hour drive each way each day to work in ‘downtown’ – not an unusual phenomenon.
In America, like in Oz, whilst poverty levels had significantly reduced from post-WWII highs, increasingly, govts have neglected govt housing and set frameworks of incentives for land barons and private developers – tax breaks, and ludicrous planning constraints that encourage inefficient excess land usage and the building of ‘McMansions’, and accordingly massive costs to service, run and maintain them. And that industry scourged housing consumers nationwide.
In America, the situation became so severe, that it ventured the ‘no/low doc loans’ scheme to put the poor into ownership of old poor-quality, often derelict houses. The scheme collapsed due to inability to pay and/or live properly in the dwellings. It gave rise to the 2008 global financial crisis, from which the world has still not recovered.
In America, at least they had the ‘Fanny Mae’ system of 30 year fixed interest mortgages. In Oz, however, in a patsy between govt and the big retail banks and the RE industry, we locked in dubious stamp duties (despite promising to eliminate them), negative gearing and capital gains tax massive discounts. Drooling investors went crazy buying dwellings, sending prices skyrocketing, creating a massive market distortion, locking many ordinary wage earners out of ownership, and unable to afford the extortions of the rent-seekers.
On current trends, ordinary Australians won’t be able to afford a home by 2026.
An insanity of hubris, greed and stupidity inherent in neo-liberal polity. The unlocking of which is a nightmare bringing a lack of confidence in ‘western democracy’
No wonder the unsustainable ‘consumerist dream’ is rapidly crumbling before our eyes.
I only have one comment about the numbers provided:
Aged care workers are pretty much minimum wage, so how can they afford more rental than a nurse?
It is obscene that a small number of people get to own houses they will never live in and get tax benefits for it. But in the process, because they are driving up prices, even with tax benefits they need to keep increasing rents to cover the costs.
If the government does not wind back the tax benefits I see great parts of society collapsing as people cannot afford to live anywhere. The response? Criminalise homelessness!
Meanwhile the economy will collapse as there is so much money taken out of the economy to fund this, businesses are going to lose more and more customers as the money left over is not enough to spend on other goods and services. Bankruptcies will increase and even the banks will suffer. We are nearly at the tipping point now. The median wage is about $49,000 gross and $43,500 after tax. Median rents are about $36,000 meaning the ordinary person has about $7,000/pa or about $134/week for all costs – food, energy, school fees, etc. Completely unsustainable, as the article suggests.
Armageddon is coming.
The only solution is to wind back the tax benefits.
if the investor has 3 or more properties, then the 3rd and subsequent ones must have the tax benefits cut completely with, say, a 12 month notice period. The 2nd investment property should have CGT discount and negative gearing wound back to Zero over 5 years, with a 12 month grace period. So CGT discount is 40% in year 2, 30% year 3, 20% year 4, 10% year 5 and 0 year 6. Negative gearing the same. Year 2, only 80% counts, year 3 is 60%, year 4 is 40%, year 5 is 20% and year 6 Zero.
The remaining property should be subject to half the rate of winding back, so in 10 years it will get no benefits.
These benefits can be maintained for Greenfields properties only, but with a 10 year limit and then wind back at the 5 year rate.
Sounds radical? The alternative will cripple our society.
Any house, anywhere that was getting a tax break, once sold, is ineligible