Additional Comments from the Australian Greens

Introduction

By almost every measure, Australia is facing a nationwide housing emergency.[1]

National Shelter

1.1The Australian Greens thank all those who made submissions, provided evidence and shared the traumatic experience of being a renter during this inquiry and to those who have advocated for meaningful reforms to improve renters' rights and security.

1.2Australia 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,[2] 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 current state of renting and its impacts are encapsulated in the following quotes:

I feel exploited, exhausted and increasingly angry at the way that I'm being treated in this country. My sole purpose in life is not to feather the nests of others, yet all I work for is to pay someone else's mortgage and ensure their comfortable retirement whilst jeopardising my own. This system is so broken it is killing people, limiting the potential of others and seriously damaging the social cohesion of our society. The market requires a systematic overhaul, and so I'm asking you: 'Please can you commit to giving everyone a fair go at securing a home?' That's all I need. I just need somewhere where I can feel safe.[3]

Jo, renter and witness

…renting should not be the system of duress it currently is for so many people. It should not be a poverty trap. It should not require ever-increasing amounts of money just to keep a roof over our head, diminishing savings and the ability of people to save for future purposes.[4]

Robyn, renter and witness

1.3The 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.

1.4These reforms are reflected in our recommendations. They include rent controls and rent freezes to limit rental increases; the strengthening of renters’ rights and a dramatic increase in investment in public and community housing, commensurate with the shortfall.

1.5We 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.

Stronger renters’ rights

1.6In the hearings, the committee heard powerful, personal evidence from renters across jurisdictions about the inadequacy of tenant protections and its impacts.

1.7Jennifer said:

In the entirety of living in private rentals, this has been our experience. Where there is a huge disparity in power, there is exploitation. The power imbalances between landlords and tenants are vast; therefore, tenants are exploited, manipulated and coercively controlled by landlords and real estate agents. We have lived in fear and been coercively controlled by real estate agents and landlords for 40 years. Living in fear has shaped our lives and has had an enormous impact on our mental health.[5]

1.8Leanne said:

There's inequality and unfairness in our current rental system, and it favours our landlords. The system is failing us. Asking for the leaky gas stove to be repaired or for the hole in the back deck to be repaired so we don't step through it in the dark is a risk. Asking not to have to set rat traps under your bed at night so that you can sleep is not good enough. But it's okay because the rent's cheap. Every conversation with my landlord is a mental calculation about how much this is going to cost me. I've just waited two weeks for a new washing machine. There are eight people in our flats using one washing machine. I looked on Google, and $600 is all that costs, but that's a mental calculation in my mind: where's the next rent increase coming from? The list goes on with the repairs, and I wish that the rat trap under the bed was a joke. But it's not.[6]

1.9Renters across the country are having to live in inadequate and unsafe conditions due to the fundamental power imbalance between landlords and tenants. Many submissions pointed to tenancy legislation as an exacerbating factor in this imbalance.

1.10For example, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre stated in relation to tenancy legislation that allows for no-grounds evictions:

Because people who rent their home know they might be evicted without the landlord having to provide any grounds, they are fearful or at least hesitant to assert any other rights they have at law, including requesting minor alterations to the property or even basic repairs and maintenance.[7]

1.11A submission from a group of national renter’s organisations noted:

Without better protections against no-cause evictions, including at the end of fixed-term leases, renters cannot enforce other rights without fear of reprisal. We recommend the prioritising of reforms to ensure landlords must provide renters with a valid reason for terminating a tenancy to provide better protection against arbitrary and unfair evictions.[8]

1.12Many submitters raised issues with the liveability and maintenance of rental properties. Better Renting stated:

Many rental properties make it virtually impossible for people to achieve a healthy temperature indoors in summer and winter. It’s not just a case of being able to afford the energy — in some cases, the physics of the substandard property are such that people simply can’t heat it enough to get it to a liveable temperature in winter.[9]

1.13The Renters and Housing Union said:

Rental properties are often in poor states of repair and lack insulation. This makes for both uncomfortable and expensive living due to the cost of heating and cooling. Renters often have to supply their owners with heating and cooling hardware.[10]

1.14They also highlighted the inconsistency of renters’ rights across Australia:

Renter's rights vary from state to state and territory. Someone moving even a few kilometres may have completely different protections under local laws, leading to vastly different quality of outcomes.[11]

1.15The Australian Greens are profoundly concerned about the current lack of protections for renters. We believe that the current patchwork of ineffective and inadequate tenancy laws does not uphold the right to safe and secure housing. The Australian Government must urgently take a role in guaranteeing stronger rental protections.

1.16The Australian Government take a coordinating role to guarantee stronger rental rights, including:

a presumed right to longer leases;

minimum standards covering ventilation, heating, cooling and insulation, sufficient for a changing climate;

genuine end to no ground evictions, including at the end of a fixed term lease;

grounds for eviction to be clearly defined, with a requirement for a landlord to prove to the tribunal that the ground can be established. Grounds should be limited to:

-sale of the property;

-landlord or immediate family member moving into the property;

-demolition of the property; or

-reconstruction, renovation or repair of the property only where the work cannot be carried out unless the property is vacated, and only after relevant permits have been obtained.

Urgently increase investment in public, social and community housing

1.17Overwhelming evidence was presented to the committee about the need for a substantial increase in funding for public, social and community housing.

1.18Community Housing Industry Association revealed:

The evidence is that Australia needs around 8-9% of its total housing stock to be social housing for low income households and around another 3% to be affordable rental housing for moderate income households. This is about three times the current supply.[12]

1.19Everybody’s Home stated:

Poor planning and chronic underinvestment has also led to ballooning social housing waitlists, with an estimated shortfall of anywhere between 640,000-750,000 social homes. … Between 165,000 and 240,000 new dwellings were built across the country each year over the last decade. Increasing supply in the private market has failed to make housing more affordable. Instead, wealthier households have simply become smaller and become more likely to own more than one home. Australia’s undersupply is not in generic housing, but in social and affordable housing.[13]

1.20Homelessness Australia urged:

The most impactful policy response … is to address the market failure in the rental market by provision of social and affordable rentals at a significant scale to deliver urgently needed homes, and simultaneously to relieve inflationary pressure in the private rental market.[14]

1.21Housing for the Aged Action Group said:

Given the intensity of the housing crisis, there is a need to both rapidly expand affordable housing provision for older people and reduce housing stress and precarity. Although the commitment to build 30,000 social and affordable homes over 5 years through National Housing Accord is a welcome development, there is a clear need to significantly increase the public and community housing stock across the country at a much larger scale.[15]

1.22The Australian Greens welcome the Commonwealth Government’s investment in social and affordable housing through the implementation of the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF). However, it is clear that this investment will not meet the deficit in social, public and community housing.

1.23Under the HAFF the Commonwealth Government has promised to build 20,000 new social homes in five years[16] and 10,000 affordable homes. An additional $1 billion investment in public and community housing and $2 billion to the Social Housing Accelerator Fund[17] was also gained by the Australian Greens through negotiations. Although submissions to the inquiry closed prior to the HAFF passing parliament, the need to invest substantially more than is committed in the HAFF was noted by many submitters. For example, Everybody’s Home recommended the government:

Urgently begin a program to end Australia’s social housing shortfall by funding and building at least 25,000 homes each year.[18]

1.24Similarly, Housing for the Aged Action Group said:

The Federal government in collaboration with State and Territory governments should fund the construction of social and affordable housing as a matter of priority. Given the current shortage and the future demand … the government should fund the construction of 26,000 social and affordable homes per year as a matter of priority.[19]

1.25National Shelter noted:

There is a need to significantly lift the investment into social and affordable housing to respond to the current demand, meet the backlog, and future demand. At least a minimum of 30,000 social and affordable dwellings needs to be delivered annually to meet this demand. Alternatively, we need to aim for social and affordable housing to be 10% of housing stock. This quantum does not need to be delivered from 2023/24, but a well laid out plan and commitment that ramps up delivery of a pipeline of 30,000 new dwellings per year. The current funding regime, including both the NHHA and the HAFF will not achieve this aim.[20]

1.26Additionally, submitters noted that the shortfall in public and community housing was contributing to skyrocketing private rents.

1.27The Community Housing Industry Association said:

Rising rents are also having an impact on the community housing sector’s ability to head lease homes from the private sector. Responses to our survey indicated that around 80% are finding it difficult to source homes to head lease and a similar number report an increase in private landlords leaving the schemes.[21]

1.28Given this overwhelming evidence, the Greens are disappointed with the recommendation that has been agreed to by the committee which is essentially to maintain the status quo of inadequate funding. Much more investment is needed to boost supply if we are to significantly reduce public and community housing waiting lists and have an impact on the current extremely low vacancy rates in the private rental market which have led to large rent increases.

1.29The Australian Government urgently commit investment in public, social, community and genuinely affordable housing commensurate with the shortfall.

Rent freezes and rent caps are needed to stop rapidly increasing rent rises

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.[22]

Maiy Azize, Everybody’s Home

1.30Many witnesses told the committee how unrelenting and devastating rental increases can be to a person’s finances and wellbeing.

1.31Amity 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.[23]

1.32Leanne 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.[24]

1.33Martina 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.[25]

1.34Jo 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.[26]

1.35The committee also heard how unregulated rental hikes have driven a family to move into a caravan[27] and a single mother being forced to live in a share house with her baby.[28]

1.36The 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.

1.37Robyn 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.[29]

1.38Samira 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.[30]

1.39Amity 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.'[31]

1.40Many submissions supported the testimonials of renters and recommended an urgent limit to rental increases.

1.41The Renters 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.[32]

1.42Better 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.[33]

1.43Urgent 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.

1.44The 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.

Senator Janet Rice

Chair

Footnotes

[1]National Shelter, Submission 163, p. 2.

[2]Everybody’s Home, Submission 52, p. 3.

[3]Jo, private capacity, Proof Committee Hansard, 23 August 2023, p. 21.

[4]Robyn, private capacity, Proof Committee Hansard, 23 August 2023, p. 26.

[5]Jennifer, private capacity, Proof Committee Hansard, 23 August 2023, p. 26.

[6]Leanne, private capacity, Proof Committee Hansard, 23 August 2023, p. 30.

[7]Public Interest Advocacy Centre, Submission 45, p. 4.

[8]National Association of Renters’ Organisations, Submission 47, p. 2.

[9]Better Renting, Submission 46, p. 7.

[10]Renters and Housing Union, Submission 55, p. 10.

[11]Renters and Housing Union, Submission 55, p. 4.

[12]Community Housing Industry Association, Submission 41, p. 12.

[13]Everybody’s Home, Submission 52, p. 3.

[14]Homelessness Australia, Submission 54, p. 5.

[15]Housing for the Aged Action Group, Submission 130, p. 7.

[16]Jessica Riga, ‘Where will these new homes be built? Here's what the government's new housing bill means for you’, ABC News, 12 September 2023, www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-12/the-albanese-greens-housing-bill-explained-new-homes-location/102844292 (accessed 20 September 2023).

[17]The Hon Julie Collins MP, Minister for Housing, Homelessness and Small Business, and The Hon Anthony Albanese MP, Prime Minister of Australia, ‘Delivering on the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund’, Media Release, 11 September 2023.

[18]Everybody’s Home, Submission 52, p. 5.

[19]Housing for the Aged Action Group, Submission 130, p. 8.

[20]National Shelter, Submission 163, p. 7.

[21]Community Housing Industry Association, Submission 41, p. 8.

[22]Ms Maiy Azize, Campaign Spokesperson, Everybody's Home, ProofCommittee Hansard, 30 August 2023, p. 25.

[23]Amity, private capacity, Proof Committee Hansard, 24 August 2023, p. 22.

[24]Leanne, private capacity, Proof Committee Hansard, 23 August 2023, p. 26.

[25]Martina, private capacity, Proof Committee Hansard, 23 August 2023, p. 23.

[26]Jo, private capacity, Proof Committee Hansard, 23 August 2023, p. 20.

[27]Witness A, private capacity, Proof Committee Hansard, 30 August 2023, p. 36.

[28]Ada, private capacity, Proof Committee Hansard, 30 August 2023, p. 28.

[29]Robyn, private capacity, Proof Committee Hansard, 23 August 2023, p. 25.

[30]Samira, private capacity, Proof Committee Hansard, 30 August 2023, p. 34.

[31]Amity, private capacity, Proof Committee Hansard, 24 August 2023, p. 24.

[32]Renters and Housing Union, Submission 55, p. 5.

[33]Better Renting, Submission 46, p. 3.