Anglicare’s annual national report into rental affordability has found that all rental properties are unaffordable on the Youth Allowance.
The Anglican Church-associated charitable organisation surveyed 45,115 rental properties across Australia. Only three – all sharehouses – were affordable on JobSeeker, 31 of which were on the Disability Support Pension, 89 on the Age Pension and 289 on minimum wage. Each of these numbers accounted for less than one percent of surveyed properties.
Anglicare Australia Executive Director Kasy Chambers declared the housing crisis worse than ever, labelling it “Australia’s new normal.”
“We’ve never seen such bad results for people on the minimum wage, with affordability halving for a single person in the last two years. Even couples with both partners working full-time are locked out of nearly 90 percent of rentals,” Chambers said in a press release.
“People on Centrelink payments are being pushed out of housing altogether… For a person out of work, [housing affordability is] 0 percent – and that includes the highest rate of rent assistance.”
The New South Wales results in the survey were in line with or worse than the national average. According to SQM Research, the average rental property in Sydney costs $851 per week as of April, with a unit costing an average of $709. Youth Allowance rates vary from $395.30 per fortnight for a single minor living with parents to $691.80 for recipients in a relationship with children.
Students at the University of Sydney and other universities are faced with the often-insurmountable cost of housing in Sydney’s inner suburbs. SRC President Harrison Brennan lamented the report’s findings, telling Honi Soit that they reflect “what students’ have known all along, that housing in this country is an unaffordable commodity, accessible only to the most affluent.”
“Students are economically punished for trying to live out of home and closer to campus, forking out more than one third of their income just for rent. The federal and state Labor governments refuse to take any meaningful action on the housing crisis, only willing to tinker around the edges and give handouts to property developers and landlords.”
Speaking to the solution, Harrison said “it entails intervention. We need a rent freeze, we need rent caps, and we need the Labor government to start building affordable public housing en-masse to fix this crisis.”
Not all young Australians are eligible for the Youth Allowance. Lola is a former University of Sydney student who had to discontinue her studies, being unable to balance the cost of education with rent and other expenses.
Lola is not eligible for the Youth Allowance due to her parent’s tax bracket. Below the age of 22, Youth Allowance eligibility is determined by parental income, though exemptions exist, such as if one is in a registered relationship.
“Due to the closed nature of Centrelink and eligibility for government funding, I struggle to make my rent by myself. The, quite frankly, impossible cost of living in Sydney has driven me to do research into other states, as I feel like I have no choice but to abandon my life here if I want to make a living,” Lola said.
“I have also had to forgo any hopes of studying if I want to live out of home, simply because I can’t afford to work less than I do. It is not feasible or possible currently to be an independently living student working part time in Sydney if you are not on Centrelink.”
Leong told this masthead that “[w]e must radically rethink the way we provide housing and implement solutions that would provide immediate relief to those struggling: capping and controlling rents, massively investing in new public housing, and tightening regulations to ensure ‘affordable housing’ is genuinely affordable forever.”
“It’s unacceptable for young people to be facing a lifetime of excessive rents and long-term insecurity because the politicians who make the laws for renters are more interested in handing out gifts to big investors and developers through tax incentives and other concessions.”
The cost of housing was cited by Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neill in December when unveiling reforms to the international student intake. Like Leong, Chambers emphasised the need for government investment, noting that the report found the Government to spend eight times more on supporting investors than on building housing directly.
