There’s one common belief that unites most Australians: land is wealth. So consumed by this idea are we that we spend much, if not all, of our working lives pursuing it. We pin a great deal of our self-worth, our sense of accomplishment on our ability to obtain a home.
So routine are the conversations among anxious 30-something friends fretting about not owning a home that sharehousing in your third or fourth decade is easily interpreted as life lacking direction.
I understand those anxieties – I felt them for much of my 30s. The “third-life” crisis I call it – fellow millennials railing against the barriers of capitalism imposed on our generation. We are more educated than our parents, earn more than our parents did, and yet, we are still paying sky-high rent for small rooms in tired sharehouses.
Those anxieties can only be shared with generational peers since, frankly, so many of our parents’ generation just don’t get it. There’s a clear disconnect in our lived experiences.
Consider the trajectory of my parents – a familiar Australian migration story – versus my own. My dad immigrated here in 1972, with nothing but his clothes, broken English and a high school diploma. Within a decade, after working for Melbourne’s railways, he took out a loan for a home in the outer suburbs. My mother worked in a sweatshop and with their low-paying jobs typical of migrants, they managed to house four kids – free public education and universal healthcare (Medicare still worked back then) helped.
Good luck to the millennial or gen Z trying to save for a (non-LMI) loan in that timeframe – on a decent salary let alone a low income. To buy a $665,000 apartment in Melbourne (forget a house – the mean price for a residential dwelling in Victoria is now $912,100) on a $70,000 salary, it would take 15 years and seven months to save a 20% deposit. I know, it took me about that long – two degrees and a series of professional jobs later.
And in one of life’s cruel twists, just as the moment was reached to buy a home, Australia experienced a record surge in house prices. Three months after I was handed the keys, the RBA began hiking interest rates.
For millennials and gen Z, the journey to home ownership has become an ultramarathon. Years roll by and this key milestone we set for ourselves becomes ever elusive. And if you’re lucky enough to eventually cross the line like I did, the climb remains steep. We become beholden to banks for the remainder of our working lives and should the day arrive when it is all paid off, we’re well into retirement and facing the end. Is this life’s purpose: to labour for the simple ask of a home; years saving for a deposit then decades paying off an exorbitant loan with a sluggish wage?
This is not to dismiss the challenges faced by past generations. My parents and grandparents grew up in a level of poverty that I hope to never experience. Many of our postwar parents did. But we also need to acknowledge – and it would be great if older generations could too – that the factors underpinning the housing affordability crisis are structural.
It’s not because we eat avocados or have smartphones or don’t know the meaning of a savings account. It’s because our purchasing power has not kept up with exploding property prices. Saving for a deposit for an average-priced home in Sydney would require 260% of an average annual wage compared with 110% in 1990.
It doesn’t help that our tax system is geared (pun intended) towards preserving the property wealth amassed by older generations as opposed to allowing newcomers – younger generations – to enter the market.
This is where lived experience among decision-makers is so crucial – and where it is lacking. If the RBA governor were not of an older generation earning more than $1m a year, would he be as determined to inflict pain on younger Australians who make up the bulk of mortgage holders and renters? Would our policymakers explore other means to tackle inflation if a higher portion of them shared the challenges of young Australians and were not property investors?
We are right to feel anxious about not providing a roof over our heads – a roof of our own. But we are wrong to measure our self-worth by it. It’s not our choices, our coffees or our smartphones that keep shifting the goalposts. Ultimately it comes down to how we, as a society, view housing. We have defined our policies based on a corrupt view of housing as a commodity and not, in independent senator David Pocock’s words, as what it should be – a human right.
When I’m asked why I bought a house in this crazy market, the answer is simple: I needed a place to live.
Antoun Issa is the off-platform and newsletters editor at Guardian Australia, and writes the Afternoon Update newsletter
