By Jennifer Beveridge, CEO of Tenants Victoria
If you’ve watched the news over this past year, the sight will be familiar: dozens of hopeful people lining up outside a rental property, competing to secure a home.
These scenes put a human face on Australia’s housing crisis. The sight of tenants queuing on our streets also underlines the sheer number of people who have no other option but to rent. Victoria, for example, is home to two million renters – that’s one-third of the state’s population.
As the housing crisis drags on, the cultural expectation that every Australian will someday own a home is vanishing fast. Renting was once seen as a transitional stage in life, but with home ownership increasingly out of reach, moving from one rented house to another has become a lifelong prospect for many people.
In Victoria, almost 90 per cent of renters fall within the highly competitive private rental market, with the remainder renting in the social housing sector (which includes public housing and community housing). Compared to most other wealthy nations, Australia has a relatively small percentage of social housing.
Alarmingly, soaring rents and low vacancy rates are now pushing more Australians into homelessness. Rents have risen 30 percent since mid-2020, while vacancy rates have hit a record low of 0.8 percent. Last year, the housing crisis and financial hardship were the main reasons why a surge of people sought help from overstretched homelessness services.
While rough sleepers are the visible face of homelessness, only a small percentage of Australians who experience homelessness actually sleep outdoors. The vast majority are hidden from view, staying in temporarily emergency accommodation, rooming houses, severely overcrowded dwellings, or couch surfing in someone else’s home. Nationally, Victoria has the highest proportion of people living in rooming houses, where amenities are shared, and tenure may be insecure.
With so many Australians facing rental stress, the need for tenancy support services has never been more urgent. Renters’ rights provide a bulwark against eviction, and organisations such as Tenants Victoria help to ensure those rights are upheld. The rental crisis is hitting hardest for people on low incomes, and most of the renters who seek our support are financially disadvantaged or struggling to make ends meet. But renters on moderate incomes are increasingly finding it tough too. Last year we directly helped 7960 tenants to address over 10,200 rental problems. But the need is far greater than those figures suggest.
Victoria’s new rental laws, introduced in 2021, were a welcome step to improve renters’ rights, strengthening the safety net to ensure people remain safely housed. But with today’s unaffordable rent hikes and low vacancy rates, too many renters are facing housing insecurity. Some tenants who contact us for help are facing rent increases of 30 to 80 percent.
Rental reform in Victoria is clearly an unfinished business. Some landlords still see repairs to rental properties as negotiable, rather than a right. In one stark case reported to Tenants Victoria, a man went without electricity for nine weeks. When he complained to his real estate agent and landlord, he was given a notice to vacate the home he’d lived in for five years.
The Victorian Government’s 2023 Housing Statement promised a further boost to renters’ rights. This presents an important opportunity for further reform in 2024. In Victoria and elsewhere, governments must also recognise that effective tenancy support, backed by adequate funding, provides an important safeguard to help prevent homelessness.
More broadly, governments have the power to change the public conversation about housing. Like transport, hospitals and schools, housing is an essential form of infrastructure, one we cannot live without. But while Australia has laws and policies to support universal access to healthcare and education, there is no universal access to housing in this country.
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw how quickly Federal and state governments can intervene to drive effective action during a public health crisis. The housing crisis demands an equally urgent response from our political leaders. If we want a housing system that does not push people into homelessness, we need laws that recognise housing as an essential service, a public good, and a human right.
Tenants Victoria promotes and protects the rights of renters. Established over 45 years ago, the organisation helps individual renters and works for broader social change to improve renting conditions.
Add your voice to the Melbourne Zero campaign - be part of positive change today! We’re making Melbourne a world-leading city in ending homelessness, starting with ending rough sleeping by 2030. melbournezero.org.au