An expert says that affordable rental housing and increased funding for homelessness services are necessary to solve Australia’s rental crisis as the country’s rental market continues to face unprecedented pressure.
Professor Nicole Gurran, University of Sydney chair of urbanism and housing expert, on Jan. 17 said housing is an issue that needs to be tackled by all three levels of government, but the state authorities are “hindering the attempts by local councils to have affordable housing outcomes, for instance, through their local planning through their local planning powers.”
“When we talk about supply, we know that actually, we don’t have a fundamental shortage of houses in Australia. We need a very particular type of supply, and that is affordable rental housing that’s really earmarked for people on low and moderate-income,” she told Sydney’s radio 2GB.
“If we’re really concerned about rental housing supply, then you know, number one on the agenda has got to be protecting the existing source of homes that we’ve got,”
“What’s really needed is an increased amount of funding for crisis and homelessness services as well as access to long-term rental stock, and that can involve banding the communities’ social housing agencies to be able to have leased properties, particularly in regional towns where there’s an absolute mental crisis.”
Long-Term Renting Under Threat
She further noted that the introduction of housing online platforms such as Airbnb discouraged “almost anybody” particularly property investors, from taking long-term rental properties and instead shift them into the short-term rental market.
NSW Overhauls Stamp Duty
The comment comes as thousands of first-home buyers are expected to opt out of paying stamp duty in New South Wales following a major overhaul of tax settings.“This big, bold policy is a game changer,” Premier Dominic Perrottet declared Monday.
“We want Australians here in our state to be able to get their keys to their very first home faster,” he told reporters.
The government’s First Home Buyers Choice scheme gives those purchasing a property for less than $1.5 million the option of paying stamp duty one-off as a lump sum or an annual land tax.
Some 2,500 people who’ve already bought homes since Nov. 11 are also expected to transfer to the land tax deal and receive a refund on stamp duty, the premier said Monday.
The Labor Party’s shared equity scheme has been criticised as a poor government housing policy that fails to tackle the fundamental cause of Australia’s affordability problem.
Housing affordability has been at the forefront of Australian public policy for years. Studies show that the deposit is the single biggest hurdle for prospective homebuyers. According to the Grattan Institute, in the early 1990s, it took six years to save a 20 percent deposit on an average home—today, it takes 10 years.
In response, the federal government has consistently intervened to try to help first-home buyers get their foot in the door of the market. Recent research from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute showed that Australian governments had spent more than $20.5 billion (US$14 billion) on first-home buyer schemes in the past decade.
