When homes earn more than jobs: How we lost control of Australian house prices and how to get it back

Real home prices across Australia have climbed 150 per cent since 2000, while real wages have climbed by less than a third.

Sydney and Melbourne rank among the most expensive cities in the world. Australia-wide, home ownership levels have fallen from 70 per cent to 65 per cent in the past 20 years and home equity levels have fallen from 80 per cent to 75 per cent. Younger workers have been completely priced out of the major cities.

Among those who can afford homes, the increase in household debt to income ratios is weighing on consumption and increasing financial fragility.

We are often told the problem lies in supply — we don’t have enough homes in the places people want them. And while it’s true a reduction in the supply of housing relative to the population will reduce housing per person and increase housing rents, what we are seeing is something different — a growing divergence between rents and the price of housing as a financial asset that’s increasing much more quickly.

Industry super funds pressure government to reform tax, prioritise affordable housing

Industry superannuation funds are urging federal and state governments to overhaul the tax system, provide incentives for institutional investors to get behind low-cost housing projects and form a new national affordable homes strategy.

Industry Super Australia chief economist Stephen Anthony said national cabinet, organised during the coronavirus pandemic to allow state and federal government leaders to coordinate responses, was the ideal structure to create a nationwide plan for low-cost housing.

“Most of the issues to do with affordability are outside the control of each state government,” Mr Anthony said. While planning and zoning issues were state and local government concerns, major tax reform required federal buy-in, he said.

Local Living, Rise of 20 Minute Cities Post-Covid

As cities rebuild their economies beyond Covid-19, there is a growing call for planning measures to address widening income inequalities and density without overcrowding.
” … (AHURI) research finds that “city deals” and similar place-based funding programs can help kickstart new economic opportunities in areas, but explicit support is needed for affordable housing if lower-income workers are to find homes close to employment opportunities.”

Sunshine Coast photography exhibition challenges image of homelessness in Queensland

Jen is one of more than 13,000 people who experience homelessness in rural and regional Queensland on any given night.

“I was homeless for about two weeks, I was in my car with my family,” she said.

“(It was) really, really, really tough. I can’t describe how tough it was … but now we’ve got somewhere to stay.”

The young mum is one of 20 people featured in a photography exhibition on the Sunshine Coast that aims to confront societal stigma and judgment around homelessness.

Sector seeking urgent action to end rough sleeping homelessness

The Australian Alliance to End Homelessness (AAEH) has launched a sector wide lobbying campaign, Homes Beyond Covid, to raise awareness of the urgent needs of people who have now been temporarily sheltered in response to COVID-19.

‘Poverty trap’: Renewed pleas to increase JobSeeker permanently

The coronavirus pandemic may be the catalyst for a permanent increase to the unemployment benefit, with several consumer and social groups pushing against a return to the former rate of $565.70 after the stimulus payments conclude in September.

Homelessness a growing emergency for regional women

The first national study on homelessness affecting women in regional Australia reveals a growing crisis.

One in eight women on low and middle incomes, living in the regions, reported they had been homeless in the past five years – and a quarter of that group have lived in temporary accommodation because they couldn’t afford the private rental market.

The research has been commissioned by YWCA. Director of national housing and property development for the association, Jan Berriman, speaks with Fran Kelly.

The many faces of social housing – home to one in 10 Australians

On any one night in Australia, just over four per cent of households rent social housing.

Yet it has housed many more people than this for brief, and sometimes repeated, periods.

We estimate up to 10 per cent of Australians have called social housing home at some time in the past 20 years.

Throughout the postwar era, Australians have used social housing in various ways. Social housing can be:

  • a place to raise a working family
  • a “springboard” to owning a home
  • a brief “safety net” to escape domestic violence
  • a stable home following homelessness.

Today the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) releases a major commissioned study tracking the pathways of people into and out of social housing from 2000 to 2015.

‘We’re not prepared’: coronavirus could devastate homeless communities

The lack of a coordinated coronavirus strategy for homeless communities could be catastrophic for sick and older people already struggling to survive in tents and overcrowded shelters in California, advocates warned.

Homeless organizations in California, which now has the highest numbers of reported Covid-19 infections along with New York and Washington state, say they lack the resources and government support to effectively stop the virus’ spread in encampments and shelters, and that the shortage of tests and beds could have devastating consequences. California is home to the largest homeless population in the US, with a housing crisis that is already a public health emergency in Los Angeles, the Bay Area and other regions.

Hope is restored for homeless people with Going Places trial that focuses on health

At 58, Jackson Beaumont is halfway through two university degrees, scoring top marks in all his classes and laying the foundations to start a PhD in archaeology.

He describes his life as full of purpose, but it was not always that way.

Three years ago Mr Beaumont was sleeping under trees in the pouring rain, would go days without eating, and on four occasions, tried to take his own life.

He entered a cycle of homelessness after the sudden deaths of two close friends in 2017, which sent him into a spiral of severe depression.