Praiseworthy Australian COVID Response A Blip In National Housing Crisis

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Radar icon red photo by WhoAteMyButter is licensed under CC0 1.0

A recent study has been released by the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS). It’s the work of their Poverty and Inequality Partnership, also supported by Mission Australia, National Shelter and Queensland Shelter. It assesses the ongoing COVID impact on housing for the country’s residents with very low incomes, as well as upon homelessness.

Surprises? Yes and no. Trends in Australia’s housing events have been cropping up around the world, though not necessarily reported in such an overview study. An explosion of free-market housing prices in 2021 surprised experts both in Australia in other jurisdictions. It is dramatically decreasing affordability in ownership and private rental housing. Those who can no longer afford to rent a free market home in turn put pressure on the nation’s sorely limited and badly maintained stocks of rent-geared-to-income social housing.

The Australian Federal and State governments have received generally good marks for their effots to provide safe accommodation for people experiencing homelessness, sweeping them off the streets and into motel and hotel shelter.

In 2021, Australia, along with many other countries, decided that the pandemic was on its way out. This, unfortunately, has by no means been reflected in the spread and mutation of the coronavirus, including successive waves of infection, first of the more virulent delta variant, and now omicron.

In 2020, Australian governments took steps to keep struggling tenants in their homes through eviction moratoriums and income supplements. These actions did not continue in 2021, due undoubtedly to a general sense that the pandemic is winding down. Meanwhile, over this past year housing prices soared, at least partly fuelled by a federal influx of stimulus dollars. At the same time, rents have increased by some 8% while incomes have gone up a mere 1.2%.

It leads the joint UNSW-ACOSS study to conclude: “This strengthens the sense that housing policy objectives around affordability, security and prevention of homelessness are still lower priorities than maintenance of housing asset values, rent revenues and loan serviceability.”

In the face of a rapidly growing national housing crisis, the Australian governments, with some exceptions, continue to spend taxpayer money to drive up housing prices and investor profits instead of the fundamental human need of shelter. Read a summary of key findings of the UNSW-ACOSS study in Architecture & Design: New study reveals stark realities of housing stress during pandemic

The study speaks for itself here. A commentary that focusses on the study’s findings in South Australia has appeared in INDAILY: Social housing helps economy as well as renters

For a view closer to the shelter-seeker pocket book, try: Crippling Real Estate Frenzy, Australian Version Of A Worldwide Problem

See also a discussion of policies that are driving the rise in housing prices (both rental and ownership), in Australia, try: Australia’s Housing Policy Is Failing Its Citizens