Submission to the Inquiry into the worsening rental crisis in Australia

Our submission to the inquiry extracts parts of this report that are relevant to the rental crisis, in addition to more recent information in the media regarding further pressures on the housing sector as a result of surging demand arising from tertiary migration. [...] • Australia is facing a crisis in the affordability and quality of housing which is leading to increased inequality and homelessness, threatening to shatter the social contract. [...] • The housing crisis is really several cascading crises: The purchase financing crisis; the mortgage repayments crisis; the home ownership crisis, the rental availability crisis, with job vacancies outnumbering housing vacancies and essential workers unable to find affordable housing accessible to their work; and the rental affordability crisis, as low vacancy rates are the biggest driver of rent. [...] During the early months of the Covid19 pandemic, the government acted quickly to prevent house prices from falling in response to the exodus of migrants. [...] More importantly, both the number of recipients and the amount of supplement they need are growing rapidly due to the housing crisis.