2022-11-24
Analysis by the Parliamentary Library suggests that only 2.02% of the one million homes the government’s Housing Accord aims to build over 5 years would be affordable. Excluding the 20,000 social homes the Government has promised to build through the Housing Australia Future Fund, then only 0.02% of the homes will be affordable.
This is according to the commonly accepted 30:40 definition of affordability, where affordable housing costs no more than 30% of income for a household in the bottom 40% of income earners.
Comparing average incomes to market rents across Australia shows that the vast majority of the housing to be built by the Accord will be unaffordable for low and very low income families, with rents for all of the standard private market housing and all but 184 (99.5%) of the so-called “affordable homes” being out of reach for those most in need.
Lines attributable to Max Chandler-Mather MP:
This analysis proves what we already knew, Labor’s so-called Housing Accord is a complete con.
Beyond the 20,000 public and community homes Labor has already promised, the only extra actually affordable housing under the Housing Accord will be 184 homes, or 0.02% of the promised million homes.
As the UNSW reported this week, Australia has a shortage of 640,000 public, community and affordable homes, which is projected to grow to 940,000 by 2041. In that context 20,000 public and community homes, and 184 affordable homes over five years is a complete joke.
You don’t solve the housing crisis by providing incentives and tax concessions to property developers to build the same number of luxury homes they did over the last five years, you solve it by building public and community housing.
When you consider the fact that the Stage 3 tax cuts and negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts will cost the federal budget $411 billion over the next 10 years, while Labor has committed just $10 billion to social housing, it’s pretty clear where Labor’s priorities actually lie.
With no substantial investment in public housing, no plans to scrap negative gearing and no plans to freeze rent increases, the Housing Accord is nothing but more of the same, and that’s what got us in the housing crisis in the first place.
With private construction activity beginning to decline now is precisely the time to replace that declining activity with investment in public and community housing.
The Greens have a plan to build 1 million public, community and affordable homes over the next 20 years and 275,000 over the first five years, along with freezing rent increases and investing $5 billion in maintenance for existing public housing.
Background
Estimated distribution and affordability of new dwellings under Housing Accord