We have a real problem with housing ownership, which is something that every Australian ought to be striving for.
Back in the 1960’s, under the leadership of Prime Minister Menzies, home ownership was at least 70% of all Australians and rising; with cost of housing being about 20 to 25% of average weekly income.
House prices were stable during the 1960’s; by comparison to day house prices are out of reach for many Austrlians due to the rapidly increasing prices.
Today for the person on average weekly income would not be able to find any housing at all if they were to only spend 25% of their weekly income on housing.
Since the end of the 1960’s we have seen the housing prices creep up; however, in recent years the creeping has turned to jumping in leaps and bounds so that housing ownership has dropped back from those days; even with the stimulus packages used by both state and federal governments housing ownership has just managed to staggered back to about 66% of the Australian residents.
However, today the costs of servicing current housing purchases are consuming well over 60% of many young people’s income.
The houses that in the early 1980’s that were costing around $40,000 are now costing close to $1,000,000 or even over.
The old need for a 25% deposit has been largely pushed aside for deposits of as low as 5% under certain circumstances; however, this makes these new home owners very vulnerable to slight interest rate changes.
Home Renting
Public housing has a waiting list that is not able to deliver a rentable home for several years in most circumstances; so many people have become homeless in some form – sleeping on the streets, sleeping in cars, so called couch surfing where a person goes from one home to another and sleeps wherever is possible in a friend or relative’s home for a few days.
Today we find renting in many major cities for unemployed persons can consume over 85% of the unemployment income
If they can find a rentable home, they will need to get rent assistance and rely on charity for most of their food and other supplies, unless they have reserve funds in bank accounts.
Today we find renting in many major cities for pensioners can consume over 65% of their pension payments.
If they can find a rentable home, they will need to get rent assistance and rely on charity for most of their food and other supplies, unless they have reserve funds in bank accounts.
People turning up to rental properties are often in a bidding war with others, or even having to pay a premium to the agent to be able to get on to the approval list, or to have to pay many months up front or they would not be considered.
Policy:
We will remove the many government charges that are one of the reasons for the increasing prices for the cost of housing.
We will remove the foreign ownership form housing that is another reason for the increasing prices for the cost of housing.
We will examine carefully all of the charges by the utilities, with a view to reduce as many of these casts as possible, as this increases the prices for the development of the housing sites and therefore the increase in the sale price of the house.
We will work to increase the number of public housing available to be rented and we will reduce the cost of rent below the normal commercial rent achievable in that area.
We will speed up the time frame for making a vacated public housing property to be made available to be rented again
