Australia’s housing crisis, largely hidden, is getting worse

Stella Qiu and Praveen Menon, Reuters

Belinda has applied for more than 100 rental homes in the past year and been rejected every time. The 39-year-old Australian single mother of four now lives in a temporary shelter in Campbelltown, southwest of Sydney, and has six months to find a home that costs under A$500 ($340) a week, or risk ending up sleeping rough. “I don’t know where I’m supposed to go after that. I have got a house full of furniture that I don’t really want to get rid of. I don’t really want to get rid of my cat or my puppy,” said Belinda. “It is a bit scary to tell you the truth.”

Relentlessly rising rents, eight consecutive interest rate hikes, surging living costs and devastating natural disasters in the past few years have inflamed what was already among the world’s least affordable rental markets. Every state capital city is experiencing a decline in rental affordability this year, according to the annual Rental Affordability Index report published by SGS Economics and Planning.

Across Australia, couples out of work and single parents on government aid face a market where only 0.1% of rentals are affordable, according to another report by not-for-profit welfare group Anglicare. A person on the minimum wage is barely better off, as wages fail to keep up with spiralling rents. Sydney is listed among the world’s top 10 most expensive rental markets by property agency Savills, above cities including Miami and Paris.

In Demographia’s International Housing Affordability report this year, Sydney ranked the world’s second-least affordable market, behind only Hong Kong. “You cannot afford a house on your own if you are only working one job,” said Maria, 46, a resident at a housing programme run by the not-for-profit Dignity in Campbelltown. “When I leave here — let’s be realistic — it’s going to be hard for me if I am by myself.” Rental supply is at the lowest in two decades, pitting renters against record numbers of people who can no longer afford to buy after a surge in house prices. “We have seen increasingly at the lower end of the market, people on lower incomes, the supply of rental stock available to them is reducing quite significantly, so this could have spillover effects on homelessness,” said Cameron Kusher, Director of Economic Research at Data firm PropTrack.

Rising migration levels after borders reopened this year have added to demand, with competition for properties resulting in rental bidding wars. The New South Wales government announced last week it would ban auction-style rental bidding.

Renters, however, are getting evicted by home-owners looking to jack up rents to keep pace with rising inflation, which is at a 32-year high, welfare groups and renters told Reuters. Suzanne Hopman, Dignity’s CEO, told Reuters they were heading to what could be the busiest Christmas they have ever had, as more and more people seek a place to rest, food and other support. “We fear there is a tsunami of homelessness about to hit,” said Hopman, whose shelter in Campbelltown is already packed to capacity.

“Every story of homelessness is different but one thing that we are noticing now is the cost of living and increasing rents, which has put additional pressure on people who were at risk of homelessness, and the lack of housing supply,” she added.

Many made homeless end up living in cars or campervans, out of sight from society, the government and the media. film maker Sue Thomson and producer Adam Farrington-Williams’ feature documentary ‘Under Cover’ records the lives of dozens of women over 50 and their experiences of homelessness. “They are the hidden homeless. Gender inequality and wage disparity are all issues that led to it and need to be considered when looking at homelessness,” Thomson said.

Australia’s worst floods on record in the east of the country earlier this year destroyed homes and forced about 40,000 people to evacuate, adding to the housing crisis.

Property owners say rising costs are forcing them to raise rents. “Cost pressures include rising interest rates, rising maintenance costs, and other related costs such as strata fees and council fees,” said Debra Beck-Mewing, Strategic Buyers Agent and Vice President of Property Owners Association of New South Wales. Beck-Mewing said rents were rebounding after many property owners dropped rents during COVID, and will likely to continue to increase in 2023 due to increased rental demand after immigrations allowances were raised by almost one-third. “We’re already massively undersupplied with rental properties because the government has continued to drive investors out of the market. And now with increased migration, the rental problem will continue to get worse,” said Beck-Mewing. Public and low cost housing has also failed to keep up with demand. A report by Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) showed there were 440,200 social housing dwellings nationwide at June 2021, an increase of less than 1% in the previous 12 months. Waiting times for social housing applicants can now be up to 10 years. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has promised a fix and announced a national housing accord in October, which includes a A$350 million grant for the construction of 10,000 affordable homes. The government has enlisted the country’s A$3.3 trillion pension fund industry to help build affordable homes, although some funds and experts are sceptical. Trina Jones from Homelessness New South Wales said for the move to be successful, homes need to be representative of social and affordable housing, and not aimed at making profits.

“We know there are families sleeping in tents, in cars, apprentices that cannot retain their apprenticeship because they are experiencing homelessness,” said Jones. “It starts with a home and we must invest in that safety net and provide support for the people to ensure their homelessness is brief and non-recurring.”

The post-pandemic slump in Australian housing is set to deepen next year as hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgage debt fixed at record low rates in 2020 and 2021 mature, forcing borrowers to refinance at punishingly high interest rates. Repayments on an estimated A$370 billion ($245.79 billion) of home loans could spike by as much as two-thirds at a time when real incomes are already shrinking due to surging inflation, dealing a body blow to house prices and the economy’s main engine of growth - consumer spending.

Home values in Sydney have fallen 12% so far this year and Eliza Owen, head of Australian research at property consultant CoreLogic, expects further losses as more distressed properties are listed for sale. “While most borrowers are expected to be able to continue servicing their mortgages, there could be more motivated selling, if mortgage arrears rise from record lows,” said Owen.

Homeowner Francesca Lemon knows the pain - repayments on her variable-rate mortgage have already risen by A$1,200 per month this year, forcing her back to work despite a long-term medical condition so that her family can keep up with debt.

“It’s very frustrating and people are already struggling to survive. The cost of paying your mortgage is literally going up for everyone by thousands of dollars,” said the 31-year-old Lemon.

Australia’s big four banks — Commonwealth Bank of Australia , Westpac, National Australia Bank and ANZ — account for 75% of the country’s mortgage market. The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has raised interest rates every month since May, taking them from an all-time low of 0.1% to a decade-peak of 3.1%. Policy makers are all too aware that mortgage payments will surge to record highs next year when fixed rate loans expire, and cited it as one reason for being the first major central bank to slow the pace of tightening.