Housing crisis: Record number of Australians now skipping meals to pay their mortgage

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This was published 6 years ago

Housing crisis: Record number of Australians now skipping meals to pay their mortgage

By Roqayah Chamseddine

From a ballooning housing market that has locked homebuyers out, to the cost of living day to day life, for many Australians, the state of things is untenable. According to Bankwest's First Time Buyer report for 2017, an average of 6 years is needed for first time buyers in New South Wales to come up with a 20 per cent deposit, and only 8.1 per cent of the state's residents are able to break into the market. In Sydney, where the price of a deposit on a median priced home sits at a staggering $215,133, it will take 8.2 years to come up with the necessary funds. House prices are rising while wages stagger further behind, leaving Australian households— established and otherwise—with immense hurdles and little recourse.

According to a recent report, Australian households are finding it a challenge to eat on a regular basis, with data showing that "1.5 million families have skipped a meal in order to feed their children first". A recent Foodbank study uncovered that 652,000 Australians are receiving food assistance every month, with 27 per cent of them being children—in the last 12 months alone there has been a 10 per cent surge in the number of individuals seeking food relief from charities.

Far from chugging down on avocado taost, "Almost 38 per cent of those who have experienced food insecurity have been unable to buy food because of their rent or mortgage payments."

Far from chugging down on avocado taost, "Almost 38 per cent of those who have experienced food insecurity have been unable to buy food because of their rent or mortgage payments."

Foodbank, which serves as Australia's leading hunger relief organisation, disclosed that even working Australians are at risk of food insecurity, and that the high cost of living is the central motivating factor behind the need for food assistance. The Foodbank study reveals that "over the past five years, earnings have not kept pace with growth in rental prices", and the share of households that pay 30 per cent or more of their income in rent has grown from 10.4 per cent to 11.5 per cent over these same years. "Almost two in five (38 per cent) of those who have experienced food insecurity in the last 12 months have been unable to buy food because of their rent or mortgage payments."

Ned Cutcher, Senior Policy Officer with the Tenants' Union of New South Wales, tells Fairfax Media that the second class citizen in the case of housing is the Australian renter. The Tenants' Union of NSW, which assists between 25,000 to 30,000 Australians, providing them with information, advice, and advocacy, has been stretched to their capacity, and have so far been unable to convince the NSW government to increase necessary funding. Cutcher explains that the Tenants' Union is accustomed to working and speaking with what he describes as being a socially disadvantaged constituent "but over the last few years the number of renters has swollen, and our demographics have changed, and we find ourselves working for a much broader (and sometimes better off) group of Australians."

While renters traditionally contact the Tenants' Union on the matter of tenancy rights, Cutcher has noticed that as of late they have been hearing from renters "who want a better deal and are looking for ways to challenge current law and practice". The Renting Fair campaign, championed by the Tenants' Union, is a response to unfair eviction practices which burden Australian renters, and Cutcher acknowledges that there's still more work to do, with the next frontier being the challenging of unjust rent increases. "The cost of housing in Sydney is already ludicrously high, and there doesn't seem to be much reining it in as it is," Cutcher says. "This is home to some of the country's key labour markets and we're doing it tough - especially in the lower income bands for whom rents are severely unaffordable across the city." "But to be sure, we could also make a few tweaks to our renting laws to make it a little harder for landlords to absorb any increase in wages with a commensurate rise in the city's rents. As it is it's far too easy for landlords to push the market in their favour."

37-year-old Sydney resident Liam Hogan tells Fairfax Media that the political economy of housing is "just not for wage-earners anymore", not even for relatively high wage-earners like himself. "We're moving back to social place by inheritance of property---just like in nineteenth century novels." On his wages alone, it would be impossible for Hogan to afford a house in Sydney, and while he would prefer not to leave Sydney, he often gazes longingly at housing prices in other places, as most Sydney-siders have become accustomed to doing. While fearmongering against wage increases is on the rise, Hogan argues that such assertions are nothing more than "special-pleadings from bosses who want to keep profits at their workers' expense. As Chris Rock's joke goes, when someone pays you the minimum they're legally allowed to, that means they'd pay you less if they could."

While the pundit class enjoys laying blame at the feet of avocado-guzzling, coffee-chugging millennials, the reality of the matter is that a $7 avo mash and $5 cuppa isn't keeping them from owning a home, or making ends meet. Instead, we should be focused on more mundane expenses that set the mark for how liveable Australia is which are to blame for denying Australians even a cursory glance at a debt-free, or homeowner's life.

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