Renters will not settle for crumbs

BY GABRIELLE DI VIETRI
Victorian MP for Richmond 

Renters are at their wits’ end. 

With rents rising 17.5% in the last year, it’s getting harder to find and keep an affordable home. Parents are going hungry to pay the rent. Tent cities are popping up across regional Victoria. Students are studying for exams from caravans. Retired women are sleeping in cars. Renters on Jobseeker are spending 78% of their income on keeping a roof over their heads. 

It’s clear that the rental and housing crisis is getting worse, renters need real solutions.

But something is happening - renters are collectivising right now like never before. This month, hundreds of renters claimed the streets in Fitzroy to rally against Labor’s abysmal record on renting and housing.

Here in Victoria, we waited all year for Labor’s plan to fix this housing crisis. But when they finally released it, they stood shoulder to shoulder with property developers to announce a death sentence for Victoria’s public housing towers and crumbs for renters. 

Any plan that starts with the demolition of 7,000 public homes in the middle of a housing crisis is not a housing plan, it’s a housing disaster. 

Since Labor’s announcement we’ve held community meetings where residents have told us how shocked and devastated they are that Labor will not only tear down their home, but also destroy their communities. They are fearful about where they will end up and what this means for the 125,000 others on the public housing waitlist. But we also heard that the vast majority of residents won’t leave their homes without a fight. Labor wants to wash their hands of public housing in Victoria. But we won’t let this happen. We’ve stopped the demolition of public housing before and we can do it again. 

While Labor pretends that selling off public housing land to private developers is cool and normal, we know that their plan will only make the crisis worse. Not only are they demolishing the last safety net for people facing homelessness, but they are ensuring that more renters face housing stress by their refusal to regulate rents rises. As long as unlimited rent increases are legal, renters will continue to be hit with out-of-control rent rises and more renters will be forced into housing stress and homelessness.

Labor isn’t thinking about solving the housing crisis, they're thinking about handouts for property developers. Why? Because it is these property developers that will fund their next election campaign. 

But what Labor doesn’t realise is that a third of the population rent and together we are much more powerful than their property developer mates. There is a rising tide of renters and public housing residents who are coming together to fight back and show the government that they won’t be taken for granted any longer. 

For too long housing has been treated as a commodity or investment opportunity but we are changing this. The rally for renters was just the beginning. It’s going to take all of us coming together. 

At the rally for renters the demands were clear: rent freeze now and save public housing. The Greens are the only party fighting for true housing justice at all levels of government. Inside and outside of Parliament we will continue this fight.