Housing is a human right.

Everyone deserves a roof over their heads, and a safe place to call home. Whether renting or buying, our housing system should prioritise people over profit.

We’re facing the worst housing crisis in decades, yet Labor continues to favour landlords and wealthy property investors, leaving everyday people behind.

Every renter knows what it’s like to feel powerless in their own home. Tenants are subject to unlimited rent increases, lack of rental standards, and can be evicted without cause in WA.

In Perth, median rental prices have soared more than in any other capital city in the last year, making Perth the least affordable capital city for renters in Australia. Under WA Labor’s unsustainable housing system, many people find it nearly impossible to pay rent while saving for a deposit.

The Greens will fight to freeze and cap rent increases, tax short term accommodation, strengthen renters’ rights, and commit to building high-quality public and affordable housing. By phasing out unfair tax handouts to big property investors, we’ll give renters a chance to buy their first home.

The Greens will:

Build 5,000 additional social and affordable homes per year

WA is facing a critical shortage of affordable homes. More than 20,000 families are currently on the social housing waitlist, which doesn’t include the tens of thousands of people seeking an affordable home after being priced out of the private rental market. 

Estimates place the shortfall of social and affordable homes in WA at 54,000 – a number that has exploded since the last state election. We need bold, urgent action to ensure every Western Australian has a secure and affordable place to call home.

As per calls from housing peak body Shelter WA, the Greens will commit to building 5,000 additional social and affordable homes in WA each year.

Reform renters rights

Renting in WA has never been harder. Right now, Perth is the most expensive city in Australia to rent in and among the hardest places in the developed world to even find a rental. And with no minimum standards nor protections against endless rent increases and eviction without cause, the pain doesn’t even end after signing a lease.

At the height of the Covid-19 crisis we saw just how quickly the government can provide meaningful relief when it wants to. Emergency residential tenancy measures placed a moratorium on rent increases, which WA Labor has since lifted to instead tinker around the edges of rental reform.

The Greens have a plan to fix WA’s rental crisis. We will address the significant power imbalance between landlords and renters to ensure every Western Australian has a comfortable, affordable and secure place to call home.

The Greens will:

• Ban no-reason evictions
• Implement a temporary rent freeze for two years, and permanently cap rents after that at a rate of CPI plus 10 percent of CPI for Western Australia once a year
• Introduce minimum standards for rental properties and social housing
• Legislate rent bidding protections 

Learn more ▶

The right to a home

A home is one of the most basic of human rights. More than just shelter, a home is where our lives take place: where we build precious memories, where we can fully be ourselves, and where we love and are loved.

But for too long, homes have been treated as a commodity to line the pockets of wealthy investors instead of a social good. Successive governments have nurtured a system that doesn’t just allow this – it rewards it. 

The Greens have a plan to enshrine the explicit legal right of every Western Australian to a safe and stable place to live in peace, dignity and security, and to create the frameworks necessary to meet WA’s housing needs.

The Greens will:

• Push the WA Parliament to legislate the right to a home 
• Establish the WA Housing Future Fund, creating a long-term funding pipeline to build enough public and affordable homes for everyone who needs one

Update AirBnB regulations

Right now in WA, there are more than 10,500 entire homes listed on AirBnB. That’s more than 10,000 homes hoarded by property investors instead of being available to the countless renters struggling to find a place to live.

As the WA Labor government takes the rental crisis bad to worse, we need immediate relief while we work on long-term solutions. 

Regulating short stay rentals would immediately unlock the thousands of WA homes currently used as AirBnBs, making them available in the private rental market for Western Australians who need secure long-term homes.

The Greens will:

• Impose an annual 90-day limit on entire-home short-stays
• Improve the mandatory public register for short-stay properties, empowering local governments to regulate short term rental accommodation
• Empower apartment buildings to ban or limit short stays
• Introduce a 7.5 percent investor levy on entire homes to generate additional revenue for building social and affordable homes

Learn more ▶

Introduce a vacant property tax

Right now, more than 118,000 WA homes are unoccupied. That’s one out of every 10 homes sitting empty while thousands of Western Australians struggle to find a place to live.

A robust and well enforced tax on vacant homes would incentivise investors to lease, occupy or sell their empty properties. This would help alleviate the supply shortage and improve housing affordability, as well as deliver up to $700 million in revenue to the state that we can put back into building more social housing.

The Greens will introduce a vacant property tax of three percent, stimulating investors to release empty homes back to the private rental market.

Sustainable housing standards

It’s one thing to have a house to live in, but it’s quite another to enjoy quality of life while living in it. Right now, Western Australia ranks equal last in the nation when it comes to basic housing standards, leaving too many people living in substandard homes that make them sick and cost a huge proportion of their income just to keep comfortable. 

Everyone deserves to live in a home free of toxic mould, doors that don’t lock or dangerous electrical problems – and for that home to conform to a high standard of energy efficiency that saves them money.

The Greens will mandate sustainable housing standards in all WA social and community housing, and in all private rental properties. Our plan will bring in new minimum standards on heating, cooling, security and sustainability to ensure every Western Australian can enjoy living in a healthy home – without being priced out of the rental market or worrying about being evicted for demanding better.

End homelessness 

More than 9,000 Western Australians, including over 3,000 children, are currently homeless. On any given night, more than 2,300 people sleep rough – a figure that’s doubled under the WA Labor government.

Research shows ending homelessness has one of the best returns on investment of any public policy measure. In a state as wealthy as WA, the failure to ensure everyone has a safe place to call home is a political choice.

The Greens have a plan to end homelessness in WA.

We will: 

• Lock in extra funding for homelessness services and crisis accommodation 
• Invest in targeted prevention for at-risk groups including young people and victim-survivors of family and domestic violence
• Increase funding to supportive housing options, such as Common Ground
• Boost the capacity of the homelessness and community housing sectors 

It’s not going to happen overnight, but nothing changes if nothing changes.

Close the housing gap

In WA, First Nations people are 13 times more likely to experience homelessness than the wider population. And though they comprise less than two percent of Perth’s population, almost half of the city’s rough sleepers are First Nations.

The housing needs of First Nations communities and people in WA call for culturally appropriate, community-led solutions delivered in the context of colonisation, dispossession and displacement from ancestral lands. 

The Greens will:

• Establish a First Nations Housing Peak Body
• Fast-track the construction of First Nations short-stay accommodation facilities at six sites
• Retrofit First Nations social housing in very hot climates with energy efficient systems 
• Boost investment into Aboriginal Community Housing Organisations (ACHOs) and expand programs that facilitate their registration
• Introduce a co-designed First Nations Tenancy Support program for tenants in both private and social housing
• Work with First Nations service providers and First Nations people with lived experience of homelessness to review current operational policies and practice, with an objective of reducing evictions and barriers to First Nations people’s access to social housing