Australia is in the grips of a rental crisis that needs urgent attention.
In the past 12 months rents in our capital cities have soared 17 per cent. It’s even worse in our biggest cities where unit rents are up 25 per cent in Sydney and 20 per cent in Melbourne.
These sort of numbers are nothing short of extraordinary. And they are having a profound effect on the fabric of our society.
The surging cost of rent is pushing thousands of people into rental stress and plunging others into homelessness.
The market is clearly not working for people on low and modest incomes.
While better regulation should be considered, we have to let the heat out of the market by urgently building more social and affordable housing.
In recent years we have allowed the proportion of social and affordable housing to drop to just four per cent of total stock when it needs to be 10 per cent.
Social and affordable housing has made up only about one per cent of additional homes built in the past decade.
The result is unacceptably long waiting lists for social housing of more than 10 years.
This means vulnerable people are forced to go short on essentials and stretch their budgets to rent privately, supercharging competition in this sector which has a ripple effect across the whole market.
If we had a decent-sized social and affordable housing sector then it would ease pressure across the private rental sector.
Just to meet current demand, we need around 640,000 more social and affordable homes and, by 2041, closer to one million.
It’s a big task and the community housing sector is in a strong position to help meet this challenge.
The second national report profiling the community housing industry showed the 102 largest registered CHOs manage more than 122,130 housing tenancies with average rent of just $172.50 per week.
About 83 per cent were forms of social housing, accounting for 27 per cent of all social housing provision in Australia, up from a 12 per cent share in 2010.
In the pipeline for this financial year alone we have another 12,000 homes ready to start construction once funding is secured, boosting the amount of homes provided to low income households by 10 per cent.
These homes would house more than 25,000 people and generate 36,000 jobs.
The federal government’s initial housing policy moves including the housing accord and, we hope, the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF), will be a good start towards boosting supply.
We’re also looking forward to contributing to the development of the national housing and homelessness plan that comes up with the solutions Australia needs to solve its housing challenge. Essential will be scaling up the HAFF so that it can support an ongoing social and affordable housing program.
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But while the urgency of the situation cannot be understated, the community housing sector wants to ensure that in the process building quality is not sacrificed.
The government’s aim is that new housing built under the HAFF will have an energy rating of seven stars. This should be the minimum and ideally government programs should be enabling us to build to higher standards that will benefit our tenants and the environment.
And we mustn’t put ourselves in the position where we have to spend time and money retrofitting homes in seven or eight years time.
It’s one reason the community housing sector has taken the landmark step of developing its own ESG Reporting Standard, with impact metrics including climate change, ecology and resource management.
For example, reporting CHOs who adopt the standard will work to disclose a breakdown of their portfolio’s energy performance, their Scope one, two and three greenhouse gas emissions, and energy efficiency actions taken in the past year and resulting savings.
They will also report on how they are mitigating against climate risks such as floods, and expanding green space and promoting biodiversity on or near their homes.
This type of initiative and commitment sets the community housing sector apart from public and most private alternatives.
It helps explain why a government survey of social housing tenants in October found that community housing providers achieved the highest satisfaction rating of 76 per cent, a figure we are striving to push even higher.
So as Australia urgently tackles the housing crisis, the community housing sector will be at the table advocating for swift and sustainable development that delivers a quality experience for tenants. The nation deserves nothing less.
