No relief for tenants as rents record biggest jump in seventeen years

Australian capital city house rents have recorded their biggest quarterly increase in seventeen years—and the second-highest increase on record.

According to a recently published report by property portal Domain, Sydney has the highest median rent, a whopping $750 per week. Perth experienced the largest year-on-year rent increase, median weekly housing rents jumping $100 to $650.

The report revealed similarly bleak trends for units and apartments. Median rental prices climbed by another $20 across capital cities in the first three months of the year, the eleventh consecutive quarter of growth—another new record.

The trends highlight the ongoing crisis for renters.

The price pressures have been compounded by low vacancy rates. According to the report, there are record low rates in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. The national vacancy rate stands at only 1.08 percent. In Adelaide, it is down to just 0.83 percent, the lowest in the country.

The result is intense competition for shelter. Viral videos proliferating on social media of long queues for rental property viewings reflect the degrading scramble the rental market has created.

While the situation has been deteriorating for renters, Labor has made the problem worse. In early April, the party blocked with the Liberals to shoot down a bill for a rent freeze moved by the Greens in the ACT Legislative Assembly.

In Melbourne, the state Labor government is demolishing 44 public housing towers. It plans to replace them with a mix of private “affordable” apartments and social housing, in which tenants typically have fewer rights and higher rents. Similar moves to destroy public housing have been approved in Sydney.

While state Labor governments are destroying public housing, federal Labor is promoting an insulting “Help to Buy” bill. The proposed legislation would establish a national shared equity scheme, through which eligible applicants would be helped by the government buying and jointly owning a share of their house.

As a previous Red Flag editorial noted, the Help to Buy scheme is “available to only a tiny number of eligible households and will do nothing to address the general unaffordability of housing”. Although the Help to Buy bill passed the House of Representatives in March, it is yet to pass the Senate.

The Greens are apparently looking to capitalise on this. Speaking to the Guardian after the party supported the Housing Australia Future Fund in the Senate last year, Greens leader Adam Bandt said: “We’re going to use our power to continue to push for a cap and freeze on rent increases”.

But based on the Greens’ track record of capitulation to the Future Fund and to Labor’s greenwashing safeguard mechanism reforms, the party’s fighting words don’t inspire much confidence. The Greens have an established pattern of raising rhetorical opposition to Labor before eventually settling for very little.

The left must oppose Labor’s obsession with market-based reforms.

We need state and federal governments to expand massively the stock of public housing, to impose a national program of rent reductions and freezes and to end residential property investor tax concessions. Idle properties of the ultra-rich should be converted into emergency relief accommodation for the homeless and housing insecure.

Why should some people be allowed to accumulate residential properties as wealth-generating assets while so many people struggle to get or to keep a roof over their head?

A solution to the housing crisis will not come through the market, but against it—by treating housing not as a commodity, but as a right.