Young Australians struggling with the rising costs of rent have sent a brutal message to landlords.
Speaking on ABC’s Q+A program, media professional Jessie Stephens expressed the frustration of a generation, talking about why rents are out of control.
‘The rental prices are so beyond astronomical because you’re paying for someone’s mortgage,’ she said.
‘Someone who perhaps has multiple properties, and you know you’ll never get in (to the housing market), so don’t have any security, so you could be kicked out at any moment.’
Stephens also pointed out a huge, though rarely mentioned, problem for renters with school age children.
Media professional Jessie Stephens (pictured) expressed the frustration of a generation, talking about why rents are out of control
‘I’ve got mates who are having their first or second children and are in places where they don’t know (about the school) catchment area,’ she said.
‘How are you going to work out where you’re going to send them to school if you don’t know where you’re going to live?’
She said rents are going up far faster than wages, which is making the problem even worse.
‘These rental increases are just suffocating and they’re not indexed on how much more we’re earning,’ she said.
‘So there is an enormous amount of resentment, I think.’
Stephens said the federal government could ensure there are a lot more homes to rent by taxing empty properties.
‘The thing that makes the most sense to me is reading a bit about vacancy tax and … the fact that potentially we have one million houses that are empty,’ she said.
‘And then we have a whole load of people who can’t find housing, (it) just seems that the maths isn’t mathing for me.’
Jordie van den Berg, a lawyer and outspoken critic of how hard it is for young people to get onto the property ladder, has also slammed the alarming rate of rent hikes.
Before introducing Mr van den Berg, ABC News Breakfast host Lisa Millar read out an email from a landlord called Andrew.
‘My mortgage payments on my investment property have more than doubled, insurance has gone up by 25 per cent this year,’ Andrew wrote.
‘The current call for rental increase caps and freezes will only add to the problem, with many landlords, including myself, saying they’ll then sell their properties.’
But Mr van den Berg had no sympathy for Andrew. ‘You made a speculative investment in something that is a human right, and you lost.
‘No investment is without risk … you shouldn’t be able to invest in a human right. (But) our current system lets you. You lost out in your investment (so) you pay,’ he said.
‘In what other world – when your business loses a risky investment – do you get to pass that on to someone (else).’
Jordie van den Berg (pictured right), a lawyer and outspoken critic of how hard it is for young people to get onto the property ladder, has also slammed the alarming rate of rent hikes
Earlier this month, it was revealed as little as one in 100 rentals are affordable for essential workers.
Kasy Chambers, executive director of Anglicare Australia which conducted the snapshot, says the numbers help explain why essential industries are facing labour shortages, as workers cannot afford to live in areas where the shortfall is the worst.
‘Virtually no part of Australia is affordable for aged care workers, early childhood educators, cleaners, nurses and many other essential workers we rely on,’ she said.
‘They cannot afford to live in their own communities.’
The survey, taken on March 17, looked at 45,895 rental listings across the country and calculated how many were available for less than 30 per cent of the award rate for 16 categories of essential workers.
It found early childhood educators, hospitality workers and meat packers could only afford 0.9 per cent of listings available across Australia that weekend.
Aged care workers could afford 1.1 per cent of rentals, nurses 1.5 per cent and ambulance drivers 2.4 per cent.
Even in regional Australia, where prices have historically been lower than in urban centres, homes were unaffordable on the whole unless they were so remote that jobs were not widely available there.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers acknowledged Australia had a huge housing challenge and people needed to be able to live close to their workplaces.
But he said the main issue was supply, which could be solved with the $10billion Housing Australia Future Fund.
The proposal stalled in the Senate but the Greens have promised to help pass the legislation if the government offered the states and territories money to cap rents and offer greater rights for tenants.
‘The whole motivation of our broad and ambitious agenda for housing is about building more affordable housing,’ he told reporters in Brisbane.
‘We are rolling out billions of dollars in support to build more public housing and more affordable housing at the same time, as we take some of the edge off these high rents that we’re seeing in the rental market.’
Renters have been doing it tough for years with very high rents and few properties available. People are pictured queueing to view a rental property
The Treasurer also slammed the Greens for failing to support the government’s housing proposal.
Ms Chambers said the private housing market had failed those on low incomes, with rental vacancies at a record low 0.8 per cent despite a record high number of homes built over the last 10 years.
‘The best way to make rentals more affordable is to build social and affordable homes,’ she said.
‘And we need tax reform to put people in need of homes, not investors, at the centre of our system.’