The sixth hearing of the Greens-led Senate inquiry into intergenerational housing inequity, held in Melbourne today, heard stark evidence of young people no longer able to plan their futures in the face of soaring rents, falling wages and precarious employment.
New data released today revealed Australians face record-high rents across all capital cities, while real wages have fallen by 5% since March 2021.
Additional evidence to the committee today showed:
- A person in their thirties now is earning roughly the same amount as someone in their thirties ten years ago (adjusted for inflation). In other words, those born in the 1990s are the first cohort in Australian history to have experienced almost no growth in incomes compared to those born a decade earlier at the same age.
- Many young people are experiencing distress because they no longer have a future they can plan for because of the precarity of housing and employment.
- As of 2023, 61% of non-homeowning Australians want to own their own home but are not certain that they will ever be able to.
- Housing wealth transfer is one of the biggest drivers of inequality. Between 2003 and 2022, 22% of all growth in national wealth was accrued to just 4- 5% of wealthy and disproportionately older households.
- Young Australians cannot buy homes in 2026 because they live at the end of a decades-long process in which tax, public spending and industrial relations settings work against them.
- Housing inequity is also a gender issue. On average it takes women three years longer than a man to save for a deposit for a medium priced home.
- Labor and Liberal governments have failed renters: 70% of renters are in financial stress yet there are no requirements for rentals to be safe and liveable.
- Younger Australians aged 18-44 are 2.5-3.5 times more likely to be in housing stress than those aged over 65
- Poor rental conditions are detrimental to quality of life, impacting renters' physical and mental health.
- Private rentals are often insecure, unaffordable and inaccessible to young people with histories of homelessness, trauma or involvement in out-of-home care, and discrimination, lack of rental history and limited income further exclude them.
- Rental insecurity has an intergenerational impact - one inquiry witness shared that their children have lived in 17 homes during their lifetime.
- Aboriginal housing bodies' evidence that governments need to stop "managing homelessness" and instead end homelessness.
- The Federal Government's Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) doesn't address the scale of the crisis, with a shortfall of 640,000 homes.
- The $600 million under Round 3 of the HAFF for Indigenous housing is insufficient to meet community housing needs in Victoria, let alone nationwide, and many community housing providers lack the scale to participate in the HAFF.
As stated by Greens spokesperson for finance, housing and homelessness and Senator for South Australia, Barbara Pocock:
"This inquiry has shown us how cooked the housing crisis is and how many young people are living in an emergency when it comes to housing and falling real wages.
"Millennials are the first Australian generation to be worse off than their parents. This is a system stacked against younger generations who have lost the intergenerational housing lottery.
"People across the country are being hit with a 6% increase in rents year on year while real wages have fallen by 5% over the past five years. Households are caught in a rent/wage squeeze everywhere - not just in the big cities.
"It's no wonder young people are giving up on planning their future, let alone the dream of owning a home one day.
"Renters are literally paying the price for a landlord's market. Renters don't have a buffer: they are the buffer while landlords and investors are protected by property.
"Record high rents across the country are proof of a housing crisis out of control. People on low and middle incomes can't afford to live where they want to or anywhere near where they work.
"For decades, successive governments have turbocharged house prices and driven up rents, putting billions of dollars in the pockets of property investors, property developers and big banks.
"Labor needs to actually do something for renters. They must introduce rent caps and invest directly into building good quality homes and renting them to people who need them at prices they can actually afford."
