The Rent and Homelessness Crises of Australia By James Reed
Microbusiness.co.au, has been giving very good coverage of the rent and homelessness crises in Australia, which seems to be spiralling out of control, fuelled by mass immigration. The Labor Party has engaged in the largest population increase in Australia’s history, of 626,000 in the 2022-23 financial year, with a record net overseas migration of around 500,000. I would add to this myself, as a personal view, that there is a racial Great Replacement aspect to this, with the vast majority of these immigrants being Han Chinese. The local elites used to crow about this as “Asianisation”; call it now Sinification. Go to any university, and see the future. The international student programme is really just a branch of immigration.
The result of this demographic swamping is Australia’s worse rental and homelessness crises in its history. Clearly, if the country is to survive, the immigration issue must be taken on, head on. Put it on the agenda after the Voice referendum.
“One of the biggest accomplishments of Australia’s Albanese Labor Government has been the worst rental and homelessness crisis in living history.
Labor has opened the immigration floodgates, which has resulted in the largest population increase in Australia’s history: 626,000 in the 2022-23 financial year, driven by record net overseas migration of around 500,000.
This extreme population growth has pushed rental vacancy rates to all-time lows:
Rental inflation has also surged, placing lower income renting households under severe financial stress.
Many households have tried to cope by moving into share accommodation to spread their costs.
Others have been forced into homelessness. According to National Shelter, there has been a 50% increase in homelessness since 2020 and a 103% increase in people living in “improvised homes” and “rough sleeping”:
The same forces are playing out in Canada, which has just experienced its largest population growth in history in number terms, driven almost entirely by the largest intake of migrants on record, according to Statistics Canada:
“After celebrating the Canadian population reaching 40 million on June 16, the country’s population was estimated at 40,097,761 on July 1, 2023, an increase of 1,158,705 people (+2.9%) from July 1, 2022”.
“The population growth on July 1, 2023, marks the highest population growth rate recorded for a 12-month period since 1957 (+3.3%), during the Hungarian refugee crisis and at the height of the baby boom”.
“In absolute numbers, the increase observed last year is more than twice the increase observed in 1957 (+555,000)”.
“If the rate of population growth seen this past year remained constant in the future, it would lead to the Canadian population doubling in 25 years”.
Predictably, Canada’s extreme immigration-driven population growth has caused rents to surge, plunging thousands of Canadians into homelessness:
“Canada is gripped by a surge in homelessness that has seen tens of thousands of people priced out of rental and real estate markets and left to live in the streets of the wealthy nation”.
“Researchers warn government data is vastly underestimating the number of homeless across the country, as the social ill spreads from major cities to small towns”.
“Nearly one in four homeless people found themselves on the street after being evicted from housing, according to the Quebec government report”.
“Between 2018 and 2022, the number of homeless people in Quebec increased by 44 percent, their numbers swelling to 10,000 last year”.
“Quebec, the second most populous province in Canada, is facing a serious housing shortage because of factors ranging from the pandemic to record immigration driving population numbers higher, fuelling demand”.
“Government data estimates there are some 235,000 homeless people across the country, but that is only counting people who access shelters”.
“We are largely underestimating the number… we could probably triple the current federal estimates”, said University of Western Ontario professor Cheryl Forchuk.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s election manifesto was that “safe, adequate, and affordable housing is essential to building strong families, strong communities, and a strong economy”.
“We have a plan to make housing more affordable for those who need it most – seniors, persons with disabilities, lower-income families, and Canadians working hard to join the middle class”.
Instead, Trudeau has engineered the worst housing shortage in history by ramping immigration (demand) to unprecedented levels.
To add insult to injury, he has also delivered a sharp rise in unemployment by lifting the growth in labour supply well above demand:
Why do centre-left administrations like the Trudeau and Albanese governments hate the working classes so much that they deprive them of housing and force them to live on the streets?”
“CoreLogic’s latest rental vacancy data showed that vacancy rates nationally have plunged to record lows, with the capital city rate sitting at just 1.0% in September.
PropTrack has now released its vacancy data for September, which also shows that the national vacancy rate fell to a record low of 1.06%.
According to PropTrack:
“Rental conditions deteriorated further in September, with the proportion of rental properties sitting vacant hitting a new low”.
“Vacancy was down in both capital city and regional areas, with renters feeling the squeeze across the country”.
“Vacancy is now sitting well under 1% in three of Australia’s capital cities. More markets are expected to fall below 1% over the coming year as demand continues to grow”.
“Across Australia’s regional areas, every state has seen vacancy fall by at least 20 percentage points over the quarter”.
“Declining vacancy rates are increasing competition for rentals and placing growing pressure on rents”.
“As a result, rents are predicted to continue rising at above trend levels over the coming months, particularly in the capitals”.
The impact has seen rental inflation soar as Australians fight over the limited stock.
Unit asking rent surged by 23.7% across the capital cities in September, with the highest increases seen in Sydney (23.6%), Melbourne (22.4%), and Brisbane (19.6%), according Domain’s latest rental market report:
House rents are rising less swiftly, up 13.2% across the combined capital cities:
Dr Nicola Powell, the head of research and economics for Domain, believes that around 70,000 additional rental units are needed to restore equilibrium to the market.
Worse, Australia’s rental shortage will continue to worsen as demand via immigration continues to outrun supply:
“We need between 40,000 to 70,000 additional rentals to balance out Australia’s rental market”, Dr Powell said.
“That is like adding all of the dwellings in the LGA of Newcastle into the market”.
“This is a significant amount of rental stock needed to balance out the rental market today, and not taking into account future population growth and people arriving from overseas and people relocating”.
The Albanese Government’s record immigration program is clearly driving Australia’s rental crisis:
Reducing net overseas migration to a level below the nation’s capacity to supply housing and infrastructure is, therefore, the first best solution to the problem.
Otherwise, Australia’s housing crisis will only get worse.”
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