2023-09-21
The Community Affairs References Committee inquiry into the worsening rental crisis in Australia has today delivered its interim report, with the committee currently able to agree only on two recommendations:
Recommendation 1
The committee recommends that the Australian Government take a coordinating role to implement stronger rental rights.
Recommendation 2
The committee recommends the Australian Government continue investment in public, social, community and genuinely affordable housing.
Committee Chair Senator Janet Rice has used the Chair’s additional comments to urge fellow committee members not to ignore the extensive and comprehensive evidence presented by renters and housing bodies that unlimited rent increases are worsening the housing crisis, as renters are forced out of homes they can’t afford or into significant financial stress.
Excerpts from the Chair’s Additional Comments as reported by Senator Janet Rice:
Recommendation 3: The Australian Government coordinate with the states and territories to freeze rental increases for two years, followed by a limit on rental increases of 2 per cent every 2 years. Both freeze and the ongoing limits should be attached to the property, not the specific tenancy or lease. The reference date for the freeze on rental increases should be backdated to avoid rents being increased in anticipation of the restrictions. The freeze and ongoing cap should apply to new properties where starting rents are set at the median rent for the area and property type.
Australia is in a housing crisis. With successive governments chronically underfunding and privatising public housing, there is currently a shortfall of public and genuinely affordable housing of around 750,000 homes, the private rental market is increasingly the only option for renters, which has led to a system of exponential rental increases and stress and insecurity for renters.
The Greens believe that the evidence provided to the committee makes it clear what needs to be done to address the worsening rental crisis. Urgent reforms are needed, beyond those currently being undertaken by Government.
We find it extraordinary and extremely disappointing that both Labor and Liberal have not committed to stronger recommendations in this report that reflect the severity and urgency of the housing crisis. The weak recommendations that have been made ignore the heartfelt evidence presented to the Committee about the impact that the rental crisis is having on people.
Urgent action is needed to alleviate the burdens placed on renters by ongoing rent hikes that are largely a product of a lack of investment by governments in public and community housing over the decades. The Commonwealth government must listen to the powerful evidence provided by renters at this inquiry and immediately work with states and territories to freeze and cap rental increases.
Australia is in the midst of the worst rental crisis that many Australians have ever lived through. Asking rents have gone up by 35 per cent since the start of the pandemic, and they’re forecast to go up by another 10 per cent this year. A record number of Australians are set to rent for life, and a record number of Australians are currently renting. Six hundred and forty thousand households are in severe rental stress
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May Azize, Everybody’s Home
Many witnesses told the committee how unrelenting and devastating rental increases can be to a person’s finances and wellbeing.
Amity said:
With increasing rent, we're making choices between skipping meals and skipping medical appointments and missing important family milestones because paying the rent always has to come first. Househunting queues are getting longer more competitive, and we're putting up with crappy things for fear of another rent increase or a no-grounds eviction. We often talk about how we just pay the rent, stay quiet and hope the landlord will forget about us and leave us there.
Leanne told the committee:
I have always lived with the anxiety that others have told you today: the fear of the next rent increase and eviction at short notice
Martina said:
We were told that we had to move out of our property of $600 per week rent. It's a three bedroom that I shared with two other persons. The owner wanted to increase the property to $650, and we negotiated it to $640. Initially they agreed, but one of the housemates decided that he could not afford the property, so we lost the property. Then the other housemate and I were trying to secure the property, saying that we're happy to pay $650 and asking them to give us a chance to find another housemate. Because of that, the real estate came back to us to say that the owner had changed his mind. They increased the rent to $680. Sorry.
Jo shared that since moving to Queensland she has had to move seven times, costing her over $14,000. She told the committee that:
In several of the properties I've rented, maintenance has been very poor. ..Getting air conditioning installed in a top-floor flat with no ceiling fans in Queensland was problematic, despite temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius. This same landlord increased the rent at every chance she could. When I finally called time and moved out, she did the same to the next tenant and the next tenant and the next tenant. In the year following my departure, she drove three tenants out with this aggressive approach. Her response? It's what the market demands.
The committee also heard how unregulated rental hikes have driven a family to move into a caravan and a single mother being forced to live in a share house with her baby.
The many stories of significant hardship that the inquiry heard illustrate the dire situation of renters across the country and the need for immediate relief from skyrocketing rents. Intervention measures such as rental caps and/or freezes were proposed by many of the witnesses with lived experience.
Robyn noted:
So what will help? Immediate intervention. There has to be immediate intervention. From our perspective, based on my renting experience, we need an immediate cap on rent increases—a flat rate or linked to the CPI. Low rental vacancies and high demand mean that it's very difficult, if not impossible, to negotiate smaller rent increases. They won't; that's it. The proposal—which I think has been proposed by National Cabinet or by governments in the media—to limit rent increases to once every 12 months as a way of relieving rental pressure on tenants is absolute nonsense, as my own experience demonstrates: with a 12-month lease it went up 33 per cent.
Samira suggested:
There are actions that can be taken by the government to reduce rent rises—that property owners can only raise the rent by a percentage of the value of any repairs or improvements made over the year to that property, in line with CPI increases.
Amity said:
There's just no end in sight to our rent increases. Some of the rent increases people are getting are just awful, and it feels like it's this system that is about to explode. I don't think a rent freeze will fix any of that, but I feel like it could give us some breathing room to go: 'Okay, we are in a crisis. Let's just bring some balance back into the system while we sort out the more systemic stuff and stuff that might take a bit longer.
Many submissions supported the testimonials of renters and recommended an urgent limit to rental increases.
The Rental and Housing Union stated:
Regulating rents is central to resolving the housing affordability crisis. This can be done by limiting the frequency of rent increases, regardless of occupancy and requiring empty houses to be put onto the rental market or acquired by the state to be added to the housing market.
Better Renting highlighted that:
Limits are not just an affordability measure — they also support stability for both individual households and for neighbourhoods. They recognise the legitimate interest that tenants have in being able to remain in their home, and so part of their benefit is making it less likely that households are forced out by sudden and large rent increases.
Urgent action is needed to alleviate the burdens placed on renters by ongoing rent hikes that are largely a product of a lack of investment by governments in public and community housing over the decades. The Commonwealth government must listen to the powerful evidence provided by renters at this inquiry and immediately work with states and territories to freeze and cap rental increases.
— Excerpts end —
Comment attributable to Committee Chair Greens Senator Janet Rice:
"Australia is in a housing crisis. With successive governments chronically underfunding and privatising public housing, there is currently a shortfall of public and genuinely affordable housing of around 750,000 homes, the private rental market is increasingly the only option for renters, which has led to a system of exponential rental increases and stress and insecurity for renters.
"The Greens believe that the evidence provided to the committee makes it clear what needs to be done to address the worsening rental crisis. Urgent reforms are needed, beyond those currently being undertaken by Government.
"We find it extraordinary and extremely disappointing that both Labor and Liberal have not committed to stronger recommendations in this report that reflect the severity and urgency of the housing crisis. The weak recommendations that have been made ignore the heartfelt evidence presented to the Committee about the impact that the rental crisis is having on people.
"Urgent action is needed to alleviate the burdens placed on renters by ongoing rent hikes that are largely a product of a lack of investment by governments in public and community housing over the decades. The Commonwealth government must listen to the powerful evidence provided by renters at this inquiry and immediately work with states and territories to freeze and cap rental increases."
Comment attributable to Greens Housing and Homelessness spokesperson Max Chandler-Mather MP:
The Greens stand with the 78% of the country and over 8 million renters in calling for a freeze and cap on rent increases, and we won’t stop fighting until the one third of this country who rents gets to finally live with dignity.
The committee heard countless horrific testimonies of renters who had copped sometimes over $200 a week rent increases, and the evidence is crystal clear that the answer is we need a freeze then cap on rent increases.
To conclude otherwise and fail to specifically address unlimited rent increases through this inquiry would be in contradiction to the evidence presented, and would be another triumphant failure of Labor and the Liberals to do anything to protect renters.
With 78% of the country now supporting a cap or freeze on rent increases, and Germany now introducing a 3 year freeze on rent increases, Labor has to decide whether they really want to go to the next election as the party of property investors and banks, or finally stand up and represent the one third of this country who rents.
The Greens have listened to the renters at these hearings. Now it’s time for Labor and the Liberal listen to renters, not the property industry and vested interests, and freeze and cap rent increases.