In my mid-20s, and after six years of renting, I know that the holy trinity of housing is finding a place that is affordable, safe and secure – colloquially known as having a “nice” landlord. But these things should be basic rights in any system of housing and not dependent on the whims and moral compasses of individual homeowners.
The federal government has found a way to pass its Help to Buy housing bill, but meanwhile Australia is on track to become a nation of majority renters, and there is scarce policy to meaningfully protect us. Rental affordability has reached all-time lows in almost every state in Australia, according to the latest national Shelter-SGS Economics and Planning rental affordability index. Thousands of renters are experiencing housing stress, which means they are spending more than 30% of their annual income on rent. The suburb that I live in has been classified as severely unaffordable.
As it stands, many renters take part in a constant juggling act – often giving up safety and security in search of affordability. While I have felt extraordinarily lucky to live in cheap rentals in the past, I’ve become accustomed to houses where the veranda is rotting through, where every time it rains heavily the back bedroom floods, and where the wiring is dodgy so that random light switches occasionally spark at us. I still feel haunted by mould that bloomed on a bathroom ceiling; with no extraction fan we kept our showers brief, took short shallow breaths and did not look up.
My friends have experienced comparable and much worse: mushrooms growing on bedroom walls, floorboards rotting and breaking beneath their feet, the ceiling falling through during a storm. But it’s easy to become numb to the extremity of the situation. We say, “Oh well, at least the landlord hasn’t upped the rent in the while.” As though that is a reasonable deal – we will be unsafe and potentially unwell but please do not price us out or kick us out.
These houses are often falling to pieces because the landlord plans to knock them down and doesn’t want to spend any money in the interim. Our housing and taxation systems encourage landlords to accumulate multiple properties and treat them as assets, rather than homes that people live in. This has created a rental system that is inherently precarious and insecure.
In a previous share house I lived in, a man appeared in the yard, saying he was there to survey the property for potential development. With no further explanation, I spent the rest of the afternoon worrying about what this meant for my future.
But, unlike the many families living in that suburb, I would only have needed to find a bedroom for myself had there been an eviction. The affordability index looks at which households are likely to experience disproportionate housing stress. For a single parent working part-time and receiving benefits, nowhere in Australia would be considered affordable. This also applies to pensioners and single people receiving jobseeker.
I was hesitant to write this article because I was anxious that it would impact my ability to find housing in future, which is scary in the context of a possible lifetime of renting. I know that when my name is Googled, the things I have written about my terrible rentals will come up, and potential landlords may perceive me as an outspoken and therefore risky tenant.
But I am white and without pets or dependents, employed full-time. Research shows that Aboriginal people and people of Asian descent experience discrimination in various overt and subtle ways when navigating the private rental market. It is truly dire that our housing system is known to be inherently racist. While there are laws intending to prevent discrimination, it appears to be common practice in the private rental system.
If we are to become a nation where the majority of people rent, we must consider who these renters are. It is not just a neat line down the middle of the Australian population. On average, a federal politician owns two properties. The national rate of home ownership has been lower for almost each successive age cohort since the generation born in 1947-51. If things continue this way, Australia will be a country in which young people rarely own property, and the ramifications of this will be felt by many more generations to come.
Ada Lester is a freelance writer
