Independent Senator David Pocock has joined social housing advocates in calling on the government to urgently rethink its approach to housing, as the conclusion of the National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS) turns the screw on an “already acute” shortage of social and affordable housing.
This year, 6619 affordable rentals will fall off the scheme, forcing low- and middle-income households into a white-hot private rental market where runaway rents and record-low vacancy rates have left scores of the nation in housing stress.
But advocates say it’s the supply side that should be prompting swift action from the federal government. According to SQM Research, the national vacancy rate currently sits at just 1%, after the rate of empty homes fell to record lows in October last year.
“The demand for social and affordable housing is increasing, with long waitlists for supported housing and some 640,000 households currently in housing stress, a figure that is likely to increase in coming months,” Pocock told Crikey.
“The progressive exit of NRAS dwellings is worsening an already acute shortage of social and affordable houses.”
Queensland is set to be hit hardest by the fall-off, where 2499 affordable homes will exit the scheme. In Victoria, 1356 homes will no longer be included in the scheme, while Western Australia will lose 1110, South Australia will lose 806, and New South Wales will lose 605.
The NRAS, introduced by the Rudd government in 2008, promised $11,000 subsidies to property owners who signed up to the scheme and rented out their newly built homes to low- and middle-income households for at least 20% below market value.
The scheme was later abandoned by the Abbott government in 2014, and is due to expire in 2026. By then, more than 36,000 affordable rentals will have exited the scheme.
Maiy Azize, a spokesperson at Everybody’s Home, said extending the scheme, even if only temporarily, would offer a welcomed stopgap, but that the government should focus on building at least 25,000 new social homes a year.
“The big reason why the end of this scheme is going to make such a huge impact is because it’s coming off the back of an already massive shortage of hundreds of thousands of social and affordable homes,” Azize told Crikey.
As it stands, Everybody’s Home estimates the national social housing shortfall to be around 500,000 homes. Azize said the government’s housing reform agenda only addresses a “drop in the ocean” of what’s required.
The Albanese government has so far committed to getting legislation before Parliament for the Housing Australia Future Fund in the early months of this year, which is set to spend $10 billion on 30,000 new social and affordable homes in the fund’s first five years, alongside an agreement with state governments to build an extra 20,000 affordable homes over five years.
The government has also earmarked a portion of funding from the Housing Accord, which will pay for 10,000 affordable homes over five years from 2024.
Pocock said the government’s housing reform agenda will only make “small inroads into what is a worsening nationwide crisis”, as advocates say there isn’t enough supply in the pipeline to keep pace with the rate of housing stress gripping households around the country.
“Housing experts and advocates are unequivocal in saying we need to be delivering a much greater new supply of social and affordable housing,” Pocock said. He’s calling on the government to expand the Housing Australia Future Fund and make it more “ambitious”.
He also would like to see the government engage in conversation “around broader policy settings” related to housing, including tax settings for the capital gains discount.
In November last year, analysis from the UNSW City Futures Research Centre showed that the number of households reported to be in housing stress in the 2021 census, 640,000, was set to swell to 940,000 by 2041, under current settings.
Meanwhile, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reported in June last year that the waitlist for those seeking social housing grew by more than 8000 households since the last census in 2016, up from 155,141 to 163,508 households. The same census survey counted more than 116,000 Australians experiencing homelessness.
Azize said the government’s reforms will be “completely swallowed” by the NRAS winding up just as its policies begin to take effect, essentially cancelling each other out.
“Unfortunately, in this space, all we ever seem to do is play catch up. We can’t ever seem to really get on top of this shortfall … which is what we’re going to need to see if this government is serious about taking affordable housing on as an issue.”
Our society is weakened with every extra person/family who become homeless. Meantime, instead of increased investment in more affordable housing, treasury funds are frittered away on fanciful submarines while tax cuts for the upper echelon are still in the offing.
No wonder youth crime is ballooning – there are angry Australians who have no security & see no way out.They don’t value other people’s property because they have none of their own.
Yep, a dysfunctional, unequal society is not good for the rich either (eg, I read during the week a rich person voicing their very real fears of home invasion to steal the keys to their luxury vehicle parked out the front of their luxury house. Also not much point in having a luxury vehicle if you’re not game to park it in the shopping centre car park for fear of it being keyed by someone who has no other way of getting a thrill.)
I do wish the states would reintroduce robust Housing Commissions and the federal government would provide sufficient funding to support the initiative.
Agree, public housing urban & regional, is a central need that is avoided by all the property media noise…. and house owners wanting to preserve high prices (maybe well above real value); been going on since Kennett in Victoria.
Hmmm, ….. acute shortage of affordable housing, ….. lack of rental properties, …. long waiting lists for social housing.
Gosh, what should we do??
Hang on, I’ve got it!!! The answer to all of our problems is,…. yes here is the solution ….. increase the level of immigration by a couple of hundred thousand each year.
Problem Solved!!
Agreed.
No government serious about the problem grows the population like a lab experiment gone wrong.
Neither side cares-nor do the greens for all their posturing.
End of.
Was thinking that, too. We’ll never catch up if the immigration rate keeps rising, same as job shortages because cheaper workers are
brought in. Perhaps if the haves were less tied to being the only ones to have and stopped their greed,more people could get a share.
What you are suggesting Daibhin sounds a bit too logical for the liking of those who hold the real power. We therefore couldn’t have that.
The numbers of new permanent residents, later citizens via ‘immigration’ are modest and many then emigrate, inc. are dependents, but dwarfed by the NOM temporary churn over misleadingly described as ‘immigration’; while working age in Oz 15-64 passed the ‘demographic sweet spot’ pre Covid due to below replacement fertility. Join the dots….
Like population ‘analysis’, our real estate ‘analysis’ is ‘headline’ rubbish i.e. more media PR factors vs. meaningful market indicators, while much of the market is missing e.g. private inner city/CBD apartment developments exist outside the market, while ‘houses’ are platformed?
Fact is we invest too little in public housing under the guise of ‘market forces’, while property investors cannot do everything, including regional areas without immigration, and the property ‘drug’ compels people,lacking financial literacy, to enter an overpriced market, with no ‘powder’ following…
According to the ABS & Census:
The population has increased at an average of 390k/yr for (at least) the last decade (21.5m -> 25.4m).
Births average about 300k/yr.
Deaths average about 160k/yr.
The balance – 250k/yr – comes from immigration.
As reflected in the NOM stats you assert are fake.
You can continue to pretend that temporary immigrants don’t consume resources, but even a child can probably figure out that’s BS.
We have not – and probably can not – built the housing and infrastructure equivalent of Canberra (pop. 395k) every year. And we certainly should not just to worship at the altar of supply-side neoliberalism.
You are using raw numbers ignoring trends and the complex relationships between factors or variables; dumbing down science and maths?
This bypassing of basic statistics encouraged by faux environmentalists and nativist conservationists has been going round the Anglosphere since Malthus & Galton, but relaunched in the ’60s via Tanton et al.:
Late news from Reason in US:
‘Population Growth Still Isn’t a Problem. Anti-Immigrant Groups Still Think It Is. It shouldn’t be surprising that a misanthropic worldview can be taken in xenophobic directions.’ (3 Jan ’23).
As any fule knows, below replacement fertility inevitably leads to stagnation and decline in the permanent population, basic maths, but Australia like most of the developed world uses NOM net migration to make up the gaps, including net tax contributions to budgets.
You keep writing meaningless blather that explains nothing and adds even less ?
Every problem faced at both global and national levels would be less severe and easier to solve with fewer people.
Pro tip: ‘let’s run immigration at a more sustainable 100k/yr or so rather than a catastrophic 400k/yr’ is not “anti-immigrant”.
As any “fule” knows, infinite growth in a finite system inevitably leads to collaps and taxation doesn’t fund federal budgets.
You are peddling extremist, supply-side, neoliberal economic dogma that cares only for raw GDP growth, forsaking useful measures of increased living standards and quality of life and brutally punishes the poor and working classes so the top percent or two can get even richer.
You nailed it, the ‘libertarian trap’ by stating ‘You are peddling extremist, supply-side, neoliberal economic dogma that cares only for raw GDP growth’; looking in the mirror at some Orwellian projection?
Question, why do anti-immigration & population control types not recognise that the movement it follows is extremist & neoliberal?
Like the UK a la Brexit, Australians avoid peering above the parapet or ‘borders’ to the US where this faux environmental agitprop comes from i.e. fossil fueled ZPG of now nativist Tanton Network (visited & admired the white Oz policy) promoting Ehrlich, Daly et al., and climate science denying Koch Network; both share donors and the ideology of eugenics.
US KPBS journalist Brooke Binkowski covered recently in:
‘Eugenics, Border Wars & Population Control: The Tanton Network’ (22 Aug ’22)
Try rebutting and countering the substance of her article, with sources, versus the popular right wing technique of ‘shooting messengers’ to shut down inconvenient conversations.
Holy irony, Batman !
You’re quoting Reason, the monthly magazine of the Reason Foundation, a Libertarian “thinktank” bankrolled by the Kochs to advocate for their extremist beliefs, which align directly with the destructive supply-side economic dogma you are preaching.
Pretty much every post you make is a combination of “shooting the messenger” with a smorgasboard of fallacies and misdirection, alongside what can only be described as a complete mess of contradictory “logic” (libertarians against immigration? fossil fuel orgs against growth? eugenics?) rather than actually engaging on any of the issues raised.
Fair cop, checked DeSmog, true, but what in the article is wrong? You avoid structured analysis, sources and questions?
Further, why do the same Koch’s share donors with nativist Tanton population control & ‘degrowthers’, masquerading as centrist?
There is so much astroturfing and avoidance of clear analysis, while even the Koch’s can propose good things e.g. legalisation of drugs (to stop expense of prisons no doubt?).
Then recently Koch’s ‘environmental sceptic’ Bjorn Lomborg arguing publicly with Tanton’s Paul ‘population bomb’ Ehrlich, but behind the scenes both on the same side? 🙂
Well it’s a Libertarian puff piece, so probably just about everything that involves justifying why anything standing in the way of their core philosophy of “**** you, me want” should be ignored.
But it doesn’t really matter what’s in the article, because like just about everything you try to deflect the discussion with, it’s simply not relevant here.
I do not. You, on the other hand…
You know how you keep complaining about no sources ?
The obvious answer is because they oppose anything that vaguely smells of left-wing, progressive Government (even the laughable excuse that contemporary western Centrist parties represent), and the political right is always happy to play “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. You only need to look at the Coalition – two opposing parties united by fear, bigotry and greed – to see an example of that.
But, again, not relevant to this discussion.
FMD. Again, holy irony, Batman !
Libertarians as a rule are fine with legalising and deregulating any and all drug use, recreational or otherwise. Though they would, of course, insist that no help be given to people who end up on the wrong side of drug use. Caveat emptor, etc, etc.
However, this is another example of your messed up reasoning and lack of any analysis. The libertarian right only care about the expense of prisons in as much as the state has to bear it. Many prisons in the US are privatised and thus enormous profit makers for people who own them. Particularly hardcore libertarians would take this a step further, and have inmates accrue a debt (to the prison owner) during imprisonment which they would then need to pay off after release.
You still have not offered any substantive position, argument, support, counter or rebuttal based on a source on housing &/or demography?
Simply ‘banging on about immigrants’ (copyright Cameron pre Brexit….), but bypassing science & data analysis, like MacroBusiness inspired by Zero Hedge? Sermonising, deflecting and dog whistling?
Also ignores the same analysis in Binkowski article (replicated multiple times past decade credible sources) that links both Koch & Tanton Network donors (also behind the Freedom Caucus RWNJs); but in US there are questions as to ‘who is manipulating whom?’.
Actually more evidence of the influence of the ‘Kochtopus’ e.g. David Koch had been linked to PBS for years, donations etc., and NPR National Public Radio now uses Tanton’s astroturfing via CIS as go to experts on immigration and population; suggests the direction many would want the ABC, SBS and Australia to follow, nativist libertarian takeover with editorial from IPA and SPA?
Counter to what ? Rebuttal to what ?
I’ve given you ABS and Census figures demonstrating population growth of ca. 400k/yr for the last decade.
More people use more stuff. Houses, roads, schools, water, hospital beds, buses, trains, energy, etc, etc, etc.
Meanwhile, pretty much your entire argument is a combination of sealioning and the Gish Gallop.
The only person here dog-whistling is you. At least I think it’s dog-whistling. Your reasoning is so ridiculously messed up and twisted around it’s actually hard to tell what you’re trying to do other than smear anyone who isn’t a supply-side neoliberal as racist.
Again, not relevant to this discussion.
You started with blaming immigration & population growth for housing stress, without any evidence except throwing some short term headline numbers up with neither analysis nor context (defying Statistics 101)?
Further, using wordy opinions or sermons masquerading as factual analysis; still bypasses declining demographic trends etc. in favour of RW media PR focus on now or this year…. to dog whistle ‘immigrants’.
Maybe you should subscribe to MacroBusiness or ZH as their editorial line and commenters seem to concur with your sentiments and beliefs?
I said population growth is a factor, because more people consume more stuff – this is hardly something that needs an academic research project to back it – and we clearly don’t have enough stuff to go around at the moment (because if we did, there wouldn’t be shortages and price increases).
Population growth comes mostly from immigration. This is simply fact, supported by Census and ABS data.
The last decade’s worth of population growth has been astonishingly high, especially for a developed country. Amongst the highest in the OECD. The penultimate decade’s population growth was also high.
You have refused to engage on any of these points, merely insisted a) the numbers aren’t real (ie: the ABS is lying), b) immigrants don’t use resources and c) suggesting high population growth might have negative consequences is racist.
You haven’t really even explained your position (requiring everyone to guess about it), let alone supported it with “analysis”, “context” or “facts” – just hand-waving and fallacies.
You keep referring to articles and analysis about US immigration and US organisations that are irrelevant to this discussion.
You keep referring to “eugenics” yet nothing in this discussion has even vaguely hinted at it. Eugenics, just in case you’re not clear – because it really seems like you’re not – is about controlling fertility and births, and has absolutely nothing to do with immigration, or anything else I’ve mentioned.
You keep accusing others of being ‘RW libertarians’, yet you are the only one advocating RW libertarian positions (infinite growth, infinite resources, no externalities, high immigration, ignoring negative consequences, ignoring quality of life metrics, supply-side economics) is you.
Everything you’ve written here has been opinion. I don’t think you’ve even provided a single (relevant) factual statement, let alone data.
What “declining demographic trends” ? Population growth in Australia is amongst the highest in the world. We are literally a decade or more ahead of forecasts made last century. Meanwhile, real unemployment is high, wages are stagnant, employers won’t provide training, hospitals are overflowing, schools are full, housing prices and rent are through the roof – all symptoms of too many people and not enough resources.
The only “declining demographic trends” are quality of life metrics.
LOL. You already know I read MB, just like you do, “Andrew”.
ZH is an entirely different world of Libertarian and other far-right wackos. There are plenty of those in the MB comments section, but it’s not even remotely the same as the MB editorial position, which is probably the most politically straight-down-the-middle as you could ever hope to find.
Pity about MB’s ‘analysis’ and they admitted that ZH was a significant influence. MB platformed ‘Australia’s best demographer’ over a decade ago to focus upon short term immigration & population growth as an political dog whistle for the right (& old left), masquerading an existential environmental threat e.g. to blame post 1970s immigrants for everything; MB was duped or astroturfed by this greenwashing?
An acquaintance, a Greens member, candidate & Brit immigrant subscribed to MB several years ago.
When MB’s demographic analysis was described as suboptimal he said ‘I know, but I don’t like brown people who are now starting to outnumber white people, and MB matches my sentiments and beliefs’; his nickname elsewhere was ‘dog whistle’ &/or ‘jackboots’ 🙂
LOL.
Everything you accuse other people of doing wrapped up in a single comment.
I’m done. At least it has been useful to confirm there’s no possibility of productive discussion with you.
Reply has gone to moderator.
Time for an empty tax to move some of the million empty homes in Australia back into the rental market.
Agree and like done elsewhere, if you do not live in your property you pay a local vacancy tax based on sqm, if rented (Air BnB too + registration, regular checks etc.), you pay a local tax based on sqm; either way it’s a win win for local communities and can even lead to lower council rates for owner occupiers.
Related, energy prices are uncapped and higher for larger properties eg. houses, but lower or unchanged for smaller properties e.g. apartments.
The proportion of vacant properties has remained consistent for decades. It is not a cause of recent problems.
Whilever you can make more money by letting a property sit idle, we have a problem. I think I saw on the Conversation that average income from annual price increases on a median house was more than the average wage. No negative gearing on vacant properties, make the time for capital gains tax exemption longer. We need money to go to new housing, not shuffling old. Also encourage smaller dwellings so that those starting out or looking to downsize have options. Then stop f’wits like the NSW ogvernment evicting people from public housing while they redevelop (privatise) public housing apartments when there is nowhere for the tenants to go.