Migration-Fuelled Housing Crisis: No Room for Aussies By James Reed
As linked below, the Leftist Guardian.com has done a moving human-interest story about how the present housing crisis in Australia impacts upon the most vulnerable of the population, in this case a 71-year-old woman who has been evicted. This contrasts with a piece from the less Leftist Conversation.com, entitled “Think curbing overseas migration will end the housing crisis? It won’t – and we can’t afford to do it." The article trots out the standard stuff, that Australia cannot cut immigration because of “muh skills crisis,” an eternal justification for unending immigration.
As I see it, the reason is that immigration itself gives a short-term quick fix to allegedly missing skills, and rather that set up the infrastructure to train locals, in come the migrants, then the next batch, until the Great Replacement is complete. Immigration thus prevents the skills crisis from ever being resolved. Imagine a war with China, with the ruling technocratic class probably composed of numerous CCP agents? And, note that these skilled migrants are coming from a magical land creating skills, so why can’t our political class replicate this, or are they too traitorous? Spoiler: they are too traitorous.
Judith Sloan (see below) puts the case that the Labor annual migration program is 400,000, so there will not be homes for poorer Aussies.
As I see it: why people are not out on the streets is a mystery. And I believe that Australia will not escape all that is going on in other migration-mad jurisdictions. If people do not oppose this, then they will lose not just housing, but their country, with whites becoming a minority maybe even faster than whites are being dispossessed in America.
“After reading the details of the federal government’s recently released housing package, my immediate reaction was: here’s a perfect script for another episode of Utopia. You can just imagine the scene as Tony, chief of the National Building Authority, tries to inject a degree of realism into the proposal as Jim, the government liaison officer, becomes more excited.
Jim: The minister thinks a million new homes sounds a bit light-on. We really need to up the number to 1.2 million.
Tony: There is no hope of achieving one million, let alone any more. It would be misleading to have an even higher target. We have never even built one million homes in a five-year period.
Jim: So, 1.2 million it is.
For all the concern that federal and state politicians express about the dire state of the housing market, the reality is that the package announced several weeks ago fails to address one of the key contributors while refloating various policy proposals that haven’t worked in the past.
Too few people are now able to buy homes and far too many people are having difficulties in the rental market. Rents have skyrocketed and vacancies have plummeted. The hope is that by bribing state and local governments, more homes can be built quickly and the housing problems will abate.
The trouble is that the core underlying idea that the only problem is the shortfall in housing is untrue: the gap between housing supply and demand is also explained by the government’s unwillingness to reduce the size of the migrant intake, particularly of temporary entrants.
The Treasurer seems to think the government has no control over migrant numbers: “It’s not a government target or policy. That’s the demand-driven part of the program. It largely reflects that international students are coming back quicker. That’s why we are seeing slightly higher numbers.” This is a complete misreading of the situation.
Let me be clear, the numbers are not slightly higher – they are massively higher. In the 2022 budget, it was predicted that net overseas migration (long-term arrivals minus long-term departures) would rise by 180,000 in 2022-23. The actual figure is 400,000 – more than double. And instead of net overseas migration in 2023-24 being 213,000, the expectation is that it will be 260,000.
The population will grow by 2 per cent and 1.7 per cent in the last and current financial years, respectively, compared with the expectation in the 2022 budget that population would grow by 1.4 per cent a year, which is actually very high by international standards. With that sort of uncontrolled increase in the population, mainly in Melbourne and Sydney, it is inevitable that the housing situation will remain strained and unable to adjust in a reasonable timeframe.
The argument that this surge in migrant numbers is simply making up for the lost migrants during Covid is a fallacy. It’s the equivalent of passing through road works and justifying this to then to break the speed limit. Just in case you think the federal government is about to come to its senses and significantly wind back the migrant intake (in keeping with the preferences of the voters, according to numerous surveys), one of the scenarios modelled in the Intergenerational Report released last week is for a net overseas migration of 285,000 a year.
The government will make the point that population growth has been higher in the past but that was when natural increase was the dominant contributor. It has been only during the past decade or so that immigration has been the largest component of population growth – some two-thirds.
In turn, this has implications for housing demand: having more babies is a very different proposition to whole new families arriving from overseas when it comes to housing.
Given the current circumstances, is it any wonder that rents are rising at rates much higher than inflation and the price of dwellings is escalating, notwithstanding the dozen increases in the cash rate feeding into higher mortgage rates? The demand for housing is rising so rapidly that it is inevitable that there wouldn’t be enough homes.
The ongoing shortages of tradies – in part the result of ill-conceived infrastructure spending by state governments – and building supplies, as well as the collapse of several building companies, are all part of the current calamitous mix. Of course, it is not surprising that developers and state and local governments support the federal government’s housing package because there are dollars being thrown about. But this doesn’t mean the package will come close to succeeding.
For starters, the recent evidence indicates otherwise. In 2017, for instance, in Victoria, a commitment was made by the state government to use government-owned land to allow developers to build new homes on the basis of a so-called inclusionary zone. One hundred social homes were to be built on six separate sites. At this stage, not a single dwelling has been built on any of the sites.
In Queensland, it is estimated that there are at least 100,000 vacant blocks of land, mainly in the southeast corner, that could be used for the construction of homes. At least 1000 of these are earmarked for social housing but, again, none has been built.
For political reasons, state governments find it easier to introduce pro-tenant laws that act to deter investors in rental properties, particularly mum-and-dad ones who dominate the rental market. There is evidence that investors are fleeing the rental market as a result.
The main agenda of the housing package is to force the pace of high-density, high-rise housing in so-called well-located areas – read this as the inner and middle suburbs of the big cities. Whether these new apartment blocks really provide the accommodation that people seek is unclear. But in the face of a severe housing shortage, people will take what they can. There are also serious question marks over the quality of these new buildings given recent experience – think cladding, cracking, lack of ventilation and the like.
The residents who oppose these developments will be vilified as selfish NIMBYs notwithstanding the fact buying a house involves more than just a right over the property; it also covers the nature of the precinct in which is located. It’s why restrictive covenants were once common. But when money is involved, expect these objections to be overridden even though local infrastructure will be significantly stretched in those areas where the high-rise buildings are located.
The bottom line is that it’s odds-on that the housing package will fail to meet the targets and more and more people will be dealing with housing stress. Unless the government is prepared to bite the bullet and reduce the number of migrants entering the country, as well as insist that temporary migrants leave, this will be an ongoing crisis.”
Here is the human face of the housing crisis:
“After 25 years in her Melbourne rental, Louise Wilksch has just two more weeks to find a new home.
The 71-year-old was sent an eviction letter at the start of August asking her to leave her Brunswick East bungalow – and she says it has “hit me for six”.
“I’m not complaining, the rent hasn’t gone up in that time – I’m paying $900 a month. I’ve been lucky – but now suddenly I’m not lucky.
“When I recovered from getting the notice, I looked at the commercial rental market, and it was obvious there was no way I was going to find anything.”
Louise is one of a growing number of Australians over 55 who are facing insecure housing situations.
About 19,300 Australians aged 55 or over are currently homeless, and 440,000 older households will be unable to find or afford suitable housing by 2031, research from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute shows.
Fiona York, the executive officer of Housing for the Aged Action Group (HAAG) says this number could increase.
“Everyone knows that Australia’s population is ageing,” York says. “But there are disproportionate increases in insecure housing – it is growing faster than just the population growth.”
HAAG’s research shows the total number of people aged 55 or over with a mortgage debt is 1,504,793, a 63% increase in 10 years.
There’s a decrease in older people living in community and public housing, meaning more – almost 700,000 people – are in private rentals. Of those, only 19% are paying 30% or less of their income on rent.
“It is the least secure housing tenure,” York says.
“The entirety of the Australian retirement system is built on the assumption or the expectation that older people will be owning a home by the time they’re retired,” she says.
“But that is increasingly not the case.”
‘Housing is no longer seen as where people live’
Staring down the barrel of homelessness, Wilksch has launched a campaign to help her find a new place close by.
Wilksch, who is on a disability pension, designed a small flyer explaining her situation and letterboxed her neighbours. It’s been shared across the local social networks and over Instagram.
But to Wilksch, a home is more than a house.
Her sense of what is home stretches beyond her Californian bungalow style house to the strip garden she planted from clippings up to Ceres, the community park where she sells handmade vintage goods at the market every Saturday. Brunswick East is where she works, where her friends are and where she wants to spend the rest of her life.
“It’s sent me into shock. I couldn’t eat for a few days and then I got a really bad cold. I think from the stress.”
Wilksch was told her landlord wants to occupy the property. Wilksch’s age means she would be put on the priority list for public housing, but the average wait time is 20 months.
She is hoping the flyers help.
“There’s been an attitude change. What [John] Howard did with those two policies, changing negative gearing and halving capital gains tax, both of those to me changed the way housing is seen – and it’s just wrong,” she says.
“Housing is no longer seen as where people live. It’s seen as an investment.”
Anglicare’s recent 2023 rental affordability snapshot revealed that 0.4% of private rentals are affordable for on the age pension and 0.1% are affordable for those on DSP.
Priced out in retirement
It was by complete luck that Lyn Bailey found community housing – and it happened just in time.
The 75-year-old never expected to be homeless – but after going through a divorce in 2007 she entered the private market. When she was priced out of that because of her retirement, she found herself homeless – living in house sits or with her daughter.
“When I was living with my daughter, and I was house sitting, there is no way I would say to anyone, ‘I’m homeless,’” she says.
“I mean, I was doing that because I was homeless. But my friends I’ve known for the last 40 years had no idea what was happening.”
After her daughter’s lease ended, Bailey started looking again – and by chance – came across an advertisement for community housing. In New South Wales there are about 45,000 community housing dwellings, with 28,000 households in them.
“I was just very, very fortunate,” says Bailey.
In NSW, 56,000 households are on the waiting list for social housing, many of them waiting for more than 10 years for a permanent home, Homelessness NSW CEO Amy Hains says, adding that there needs to be “urgent and sustained investment in social housing in NSW”.
“[One] significant barrier for older people seeking social housing is the very high threshold for priority access,” she says.
“A person has to be 80 years old to be eligible for priority social housing, which, when you consider that this is only a few years short of the average life expectancy, appears to be a policy motivated by economics rather than to meet a clear need.”
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