The Albanese Government has pledged to build 30,000 affordable homes over the next five years, via its Housing Australian Future Fund.
However, Kate Colvin from advocacy group Everybody’s Home warns that this will have little impact on housing supply, given that a similar number of homes will be withdrawn from the rental market when the National Rental Affordability Scheme is wound up.
Colvin says Australia is facing a “full-blown housing crisis”, and Everybody’s Home wants the government to commit to building some 25,000 social and affordable homes each year:
More than 27,400 low-income Australians will either face a steep rental increase or be forced to move as subsidies provided to property owners to offer cheap rents under the National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS) are progressively scrapped through to 2026…
“The winding down of the National Rental Affordability Scheme will see Australia lose almost 30,000 affordable homes, effectively negating any impact of the Housing Australia Future Fund,” Everybody’s Home national spokeswoman Kate Colvin said…
“In our budget position paper we are calling for the Commonwealth to commit now to finance, construct and deliver net growth of 25,000 social and affordable homes per year,” she said.
“Despite being one of the richest nations in the world, Australia is facing a full-blown housing crisis with more than a million low-income earners already living in housing stress. Since the start of the Covid pandemic, rents have increased 26 per cent, hitting record highs in many suburbs”…
Everybody’s Home points to research that shows a national shortfall of more than 650,000 dwellings, with the National Housing Finance Investment Corporation estimating there will be a need for another 890,000 social and affordable homes over the next 20 years, 45,000 a year.
At present just 3000 a year are being constructed.
The sad reality is that the Albanese Government will turbo-charge Australia’s social housing and rental shortfall, given it pledged to increase immigration to record levels at last month’s Jobs & Skills Summit via:
- Lifting Australia’s permanent non-humanitarian migrant intake by 35,000 to a record high 195,000;
- Lifting temporary migration to record levels by:
- Expanding work rights for international students via:
- Uncapping the number of hours international students can work while studying for another year; and
- Extending the length of post-study work visas by two years.
- Committing to clear the ‘backlog’ of “nearly one million” visas awaiting approval.
- Expanding work rights for international students via:
Australia’s net overseas migration (NOM) hit its highest ever level in the March quarter, with a record 96,200 net migrants arriving:
Highest ever NOM in March quarter.
Labor’s visa changes will drive NOM even higher next year and beyond, adding hundreds of thousands of extra people that will require housing.
Where will they live when there is already a chronic shortage of homes for the existing population? In tents? On the streets?
The only plausible outcome of the Albanese Government’s ‘Big Australia’ immigration push is an even greater shortage of social housing, and even tighter rental market, soaring rents, and a rapid increase in homelessness. It is an inequality disaster in the making.
Instead of solving Australia’s housing affordability and homeless crisis, the Albanese Government has promised to exacerbate it.
If Labor genuinely wanted to fix Australia’s housing crisis, it would have abandoned the Big Australia mass immigration policy, which the overwhelming majority of Australians do not support. Instead, it doubled down.
