Housing Crisis
This month there seems to be an increasing focus on people’s difficulties in the property market in general, and the rental market in particular, with the term ‘housing crisis’ seeming to get used more, and more real life examples of how it is biting. The ABC reports an example in this video. The clip describes Laura Campbell’s living in her car for ‘the better part of a year’. Now having moved into a converted garage, Laura pays over half her wage on the rent… which is also not exactly ideal.
The story discusses the 50,000+ waiting list for social housing, with wait times of up to a decade or more, and presents an outline of a potential plan between developers and community groups to provide some relief to a straining system, with a large investments into social housing.
In related matters, Domain reports that first home buyers (‘FHB’) have fallen by about half since the peak in 2021 and although Sydney prices have fallen by an average of about $100,000 since March 2022, interest rates have jumped sharply from 0.1% in April to 3.1% in December. This means (according to Domain) a mortgage of $750,000 might be paying an extra $1337 per month, so perhaps there is no wonder FHB are dwindling. This obviously has the effect of keeping pressure on the rental market.
Considering these problems and the time of year, especially pertinant is this podcast about Exodus foundation, situated in Ashfield. The Reverend Bill Crewes, who has been running Exodus since the early 1970s, talks about the enormous uptick in people coming to them for meals since the beginning of the pandemic, and the changing face of poverty in Australia. Before the pandemic they were doing 400 meals per day, and now are giving 1600 meals per day spread across multiple locations (some of that uptick is due to them taking over other aid operations that were closing). He says that in the early days the people he saw coming into Exodus for help were basically either homeless, or not. Now it is much more grey with people couch surfing, a lot more women escaping domestic violence, and more people overall generally struggling. The interviewer Samantha Hawley said to Bill, “You once fed the homeless, you now feed the hungry. What does that mean?” Bill replied that increasingly people need to prioritise their finances more, for example budgeting to buy kids uniforms, medicine – or – meals. Clearly, increasing rental costs, interest rates and the cost of living increases are not going to make things easier, especially for the most vulnerable.
