Shelter NSW media release — 29 June 2012
The housing advocacy group, Shelter NSW, has called on governments to step up their support for housing assistance programs following the release of a report on housing affordability by the COAG Reform Council.
Craig Johnston, Acting Executive Officer, said he was not surprised that rental affordability and home-purchase affordability had not improved, as the COAG Reform Council found in its report Affordable housing 2010–11. The report commented on a number of housing indicators to match up with policy outcomes set by Australia’s governments through the National Affordable Housing Agreement.
He said that the findings should not be taken as a shortcoming of the housing assistance programs financed under the National Affordable Housing Agreement, however.
‘The Commonwealth Government is contributing $1,265 million to the states’ affordable housing programs in 2012–13. But the Commonwealth money given to the states is primarily used to assist with operational costs of existing social housing, and this report specifically does not consider housing stress among public-housing tenants (p. 10). There is a mismatch between the high-level outcomes set in the agreement, the indicators used to monitor performance, and the housing-assistance programs actually provided by the states with the Commonwealth money’, he said.
State governments’ housing-assistance programs relieve housing stress for current social-housing tenants and assist low-income households in other ways (e.g. loans to help pay bonds), but they cannot resolve the problems outside their remit in private housing markets.
The high-level outcomes aimed for by the National Affordable Housing Agreement should be assessed against the full range of government measures, including the income-support system and taxation system, not just the programs funded under the agreement itself, he said.
A key challenge for the states is how they can use levers at their disposal — in addition to the subsidies they get from the Commonwealth through the National Affordable Housing Agreement. The NSW Government needs to provide additional funding to Housing NSW through the State Budget so it can produce more social and intermediate housing, and needs to ensure its proposed new environmental-planning law and instruments encourage the supply of additional affordable rental housing, Johnston said.
Key findings from the report about New South Wales:
- 47.6% of NSW low-income private renters in rental stress (cp. national figure of 41.7%) (p. 8)
- 67.5% of NSW lowest-income private renters in rental stress (cp. national figure of 60.8%) (p. 10)
- 50.4% of Sydney low-income private renters in rental stress (cp. all capital cities figure of 45.2%) (p. 12)
- 96% of NSW dwellings sold to low-income households unaffordable (p. 17)
- 44.9% of NSW mortgagors in mortgage stress (cp. national figure of 37.4%) (p. 24).
Contact: Craig Johnston, Acting Executive Officer — 0420 502 708 (m), 9267 5733 ext.11
