The Queensland housing minister, Leeanne Enoch, this week urged “compassion” from real estate agents, after revelations some had advised landlords to hike rents by more than 20%.
Many of those who understand the pointy end of the housing crisis – people living in tents and cars, and unable to find secure and affordable housing – found the housing minister’s comments underwhelming.
On Thursday, the state will hold an affordable housing summit, attempting to address growing homelessness, soaring rents and record low property vacancy rates. Calls for compassion are no substitute for housing policy. And Enoch is uniquely placed to do something about that.
“It’s like asking a runaway train politely to please slow down,” one participant in Thursday’s summit said.
“We don’t just need to slow it down, or even stop it. It needs to be pushed back in the direction it came.”
Damn if only Qld Housing Minister @LeeanneEnoch had the power to prevent this happening!!!! https://t.co/a8A88yMjID
— Romie Janome (@_Imbreathless) October 17, 2022
According to Tenants Queensland, the average rent has already increased by $104 a week during the past year – about three times the rate of inflation. Property prices in some parts of Brisbane have increased by more than 50% in less than two years.
“Housing policy is a Janus-faced thing,” Hal Pawson, the associate director of the City Futures Research Centre at the University of NSW, told the Guardian last month.
“It wants to do two things at the same time. It wants to make housing affordable for everybody. It also wants to enable people who own properties to accumulate wealth.
“The two things are in tension. We have a raft of policy settings that are, in my opinion, not in balance between those two objectives – they’re strongly weighted in favour of wealth accumulation, against housing being more affordable.
“And there’s a need to reset the balance.”
The ‘renter’s tax’ that wasn’t
Cheaper homes are simply not in the interests of real estate agents, media companies whose profits are underpinned by real estate listings, property developers, landlords or homeowners.
Those groups wield considerable influence, and are unlikely to take any changes that affect home values lightly.
Just last week, the Real Estate Industry of Queensland posted an article about how the industry lobby group had “toppled” the state’s changes to land tax.
The real estate industry won the debate about land tax changes partly by framing them as a “renter’s tax” – notwithstanding that independent experts and academics mostly said they would not increase rents.
That argument is further eroded when you get a peek behind the curtain and see agents advising property owners to ensure they got the most from the tight market.
So much for the industry’s concern about the interests of struggling renters.
Of course, if you ask Ray White – the parent company of the real estate agent who wrote to landlords suggesting a rent hike – the tight market is actually a good thing.
“Right now, Brisbane doesn’t have enough homes for those that want to live here,” the Ray White chief economist, Nerida Conisbee, told news.com.au in response to Guardian Australia’s story.
“This is making it tough for renters but does make it a good place to invest.”
Political risks are changing
Governments have been historically tentative on housing policy, because it means wading into a debate where there are clear winners and losers – and political consequences for trying to intervene in the market.
Labor’s 2019 federal election loss included anecdotes about real estate agents sending “formal-looking letters to renters in the final days of the campaign, warning their rents would be increased if Labor won and its negative gearing policy came into force.”
Doesn’t that sound familiar?
Previously the prospect of a mortgage belt revolt (and a campaign by vested interests) served as an effective political block on the sorts of bold policies that would treat housing like a human right, rather than a vehicle for wealth creation.
But the growing size and influence of the renter class (see: the Greens’ success in Brisbane, 2016-2022) presents a political conundrum for all governments.
And so the key question for Thursday’s housing summit. When the government talks about making housing more affordable, does it really mean making houses more affordable to buy, and rent?
Or is it going to outsource that responsibility by just asking landlords to show compassion?
