Speech: Housing is a Human Right National Day of Action 12 December 2023

How have we allowed access to safe, secure, and accessible housing to become a privilege rather than a right?

At what point did property become about wealth creation rather than providing homes for individuals and families, at the core of our communities.

 On any given night in Australia, one in 200 people are homeless. We know that older women are the fastest-growing group of homeless people in Australia, a statistic often trotted out with no reference to the underlying causes or workable solution.

Factors leading to an increased risk of homelessness for women are reflective of an economy that does not value their paid and unpaid work. The gender pay gap, gender super, disproportionate burden of caring for the young and old, and impact of family breakdown undermine the capacity for women to create financial security that is often a foundation for housing security.

Domestic abuse is also linked to homelessness in Australia and disproportionately affects women who are often accompanied by children. The crisis is devastating in regional areas like ours that simply don’t have the resources to cope with the demand.

The question is commonly put, ‘Why doesn’t she leave?’ We should be asking, ‘Where would she go?’

While it can be tempting to point the finger at individuals for the circumstances in which they find themselves, there are also complex systemic and economic factors that prevent people from finding permanent housing.

We’ve seen in recent years how natural disasters such as floods and bushfires have shrunk the stock of homes for sale and rent, along with short-term accommodation and tree- and sea-change trends across the nation.

Anglicare’s Regional Rental Affordability Snapshot 2023 found that rising rent prices have pushed almost all people receiving a minimum wage, as well as those on income support, out of the rental market in the Riverina/Murray region.

According to the report, no rental properties in our area – including share houses – are affordable for a person receiving the JobSeeker payment or Youth Allowance and only 6% of rentals are affordable for a single person working full-time on minimum wage.

Families don’t fare much better, with no rentals affordable for single parents, only 1% of rentals accessible for a family of four where both parents are unemployed, and almost half of properties beyond the reach of families with two full-time working parents.

Both single retirees and people in receipt of the Disability Support Pension can afford only 2% of rentals, while just 6% of rentals are accessible for retired couples relying on the Aged Pension.

These figures are significantly worse compared to the same time last year. The reality is that demand outstrips supply, and there are just not enough homes being made available when there are properties sitting empty across our region and nation.

This situation is dire and has been exacerbated by the failure of state and federal governments to invest in social housing. Public housing stock across Australia fell by 13% between 2005 and 2022 according to figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, although growth in community housing dwellings saw the overall level of social housing increase marginally by some 36,200 dwellings over this period. The total level of social housing now sits at its lowest level, less than 2% of all housing in Australia.

It is not only people in receipt of lower incomes who are struggling to secure housing; Wagga’s rental vacancy rate sits below 1%, with rents increasing around 15% over the 12 months.

While the rental crisis has been linked to the growing number of homeless in our region, homeowners are also feeling the pinch. First home buyers increasingly being priced out of the property market - inflated through taxation policies that benefit investors - and housing affordability falling as wages stagnate and inflation soars.

Figures from Everybody’s Home indicate that half of mortgagees in the electorate of Riverina are experiencing financial stress, just shy of the 54.6% of renters who are also experiencing financial stress.

Rising house prices combined with increases in home loan interest rates. Some homeowners are just one illness, redundancy, or unexpected expense from housing crisis themselves.

We are fast cementing ourselves as a nation of the haves, have nots, and will never haves. And for people on lower incomes, those with disabilities, our First Nations people, refugee, and CALD communities, and those of us in regional, rural, and remote areas, the divide is growing at an exponential rate.

Secure, safe, and affordable housing should be a fundamental human right for all Australians, renters and homeowners alike. This issue stretches across socioeconomic groups, although the impact is felt most sharply by the most vulnerable in our community, and we need leadership that responds compassionately and strategically to build housing resilience.

Research tells us that rent control doesn’t work and in the long run decreases affordability and disincentivises new construction and ongoing maintenance.

What we need is greater supply of more affordable homes across our region, and across our nation. We need public investment in social housing.

We need a rethink of the tax concessions that promote the hoarding of property by the wealthy, which prevents access by the most vulnerable.

We need policies that boost the availability of homes now, encouraging owners to add their vacant properties to the rental or sale stock, for example by adding a vacancy tax as we have seen introduced in Victoria and successfully in other nations.

We need to explore options that address the use of homes for short-term accommodation, which both reduces long-term housing stock as well as artificially inflating sale prices, both of which act to exclude local residents from accessible housing.

We need a housing guarantee for women and children leaving domestic abuse, and we need more funding to crisis housing support for all people at risk of homelessness. We need to provide support for people who have been homelessness multiple times to help them stay housed.

We need leadership on the broader systemic issues that cause 3.3 million Australians to live below the poverty line, including 761,000 children, most of whom live in a sole parent family headed by a woman. We need to provide every Australian with a living income to break the cycle because poverty is a lack of income, not a lack of character.

Most importantly, we need to involve those at the centre of the issue, the people most at risk of experiencing homelessness, to be involved in the process of justice-centred design solutions because they have the answers, informed by their lived experiences.

Australia is one of the wealthiest nations on earth. It is time we shared that wealth equitably, stop telling people that their situation is the result of their own choices, and instead create systemic solutions, starting with housing security. Anything less is not good enough.