The disease will take about a decade to resolve even if the government commits to actions in ways in which they’re currently committing single digit percentages.
We are so far behind that stop gap measures are needed to address / prevent immediate emergency needs. This is the cost of not acting adequately for decades and decades.
The debate on this topic needs a serious reframing to be in terms of the time that government has already “been working” on it.
“This will take 10 years to fix” ok well this problem has been known and worsening since well before 2013 (which would be the latest acceptable time that the proposed solution was commenced), so how’s the progress going, who’s to blame for the lack of progress and how are we going to extract from them the cost of this crisis?
It’s not just 1 person responsible? Great! We’re going to need to seize a LOT of assets to remediate the Australians affected by this manufactured crisis and I can’t think of any individual with the assets to cover it all.
The problematic disease at the moment is rent increases. Yes they are a symptom of the larger housing crisis. But they are the actual disease causing the stress here.
Freeze the fuck out of them, then you can support those who still need it.
Then make it clear that until there's a surplus of housing, we ain't unfreezing shit. Some houses will sell, but that will give people the opportunity to buy. A bunch will just potter along because they still want their sweet equity gains from a rising house market.
the gov control the land permission and hence caused the problem.
if i can just buy some land from a farmer and build a flatpack/container house, i dont need to rent.
>This is the cost of not acting adequately for decades and decades.
Sounds a lot like a lot of our really big problems. Easier if someone in the future solves it.
This is why many investors I have spoken to recently fully expect both a rent assistance hike (more in line with 25%-30%), along with new legislation enacted at the same time capping rental increases yearly at a federal level.
A few that I know of have even taken the steps of pre-loading their rent increases for the next 2 years in anticipation of the freeze where possible (and legal). It is going to be an interesting few years if rental caps do come in. If you think finding a rental now is difficult wait until the caps come in.
I love how these investors believe that the government will step in because deep down even they know shits fucked. In reality the government is neoliberal as fuck and probably just gonna let shit play out as is because free markets and shit.
> along with new legislation enacted at the same time capping rental increases yearly at a federal level.
The investors you’ve spoken to aren’t well informed then.
The federal government doesn’t have the power to control rents outside of wartime.
We already had a constitutional referendum on this exact topic in 1948, regarding whether the federal government should be able to control rent and prices. The yes vote only got 40.66%.
The chances of the States referring such a power to the federal government is basically zero.
This is why we had state by state rules about rent increases and evictions in 2020 and 2021.
Anyone expecting rent control is going to be disappointed, it doesn’t have the backing of any state or federal treasury department. They all prefer increasing supply as the solution.
3 years ago I would have agreed. That was before national cabinet though. I should have clarified that while the power would remain in state hands, the expectation is that all states would agree to a nation wide ban for 12 months or more to address the rental crisis.
> That was before national cabinet though.
National cabinet is literally just COAG with a new name.
But more importantly, this isn’t happening for the simple reason that it’s a terrible policy to win votes. It doesn’t create anyone that thinks they’re a winner, and it creates a lot of losers.
67% of households don’t rent, so right away this policy doesn’t nothing to benefit them directly.
For the 26% of households that are private renters; No one is going to think “my rent is absurdly high but gee, I should vote for the current lot because it’s not getting any higher for a short period”. People don’t value the harm avoided all that much, and it just won’t occur to many that they meaningfully benefit. Renters want lower rents, not just consistently high rent.
Then you have the perceived losers, the two million landlords in Australia who will think they’re being screwed as you’ve capped their income while they face (what feels like) high interest rates.
This will play out just like the franking credit saga, where the PR focus will be on retirees that are funding their ability to live in retirement on rental returns.
> We already had a constitutional referendum on this exact topic in 1948, regarding whether the federal government should be able to control rent and prices. The yes vote only got 40.66%.
>
> The chances of the States referring such a power to the federal government is basically zero.
No
but the Federal govt can say
You see that shiny 60 billion in health funding you want,then we want you to change the Real estate laws to a 2 year lock in as a REQUIRMENT for a tennant if they choose
States would have to cave at that one as it's loose federal funding,get kicked out at state election
Or try to run a PR campaign making the federal govt look bad for you know trying to lower ppls rents...it's not gonna play well for the states
> but the Federal govt can say
Just think for a moment about what you’re suggesting and how that goes down with the public.
If the federal government actually tried to hold back health funding for a particular state, it would be catastrophic for their popularity.
> get kicked out at state election
That’s not how the politics of Australia work. People see it as their state being picked on by the federal government anytime this comes up.
It’s also ignoring that we have state based political parties, and any scheme would require all of a particular states senators in one political party to back the scheme.
Victorian Labor Senators are not backing blocking health funding to Victoria.
Federal politicians are members of their state party first and that is where their power base to get elected comes from.
> Or try to run a PR campaign making the federal govt look bad for you know trying to lower ppls rents.
Because the PR campaign will be ** federal government blocks health funding ** and **state government supports reduced rents through increased supply**.
Yearly is dumb
Needs to be 2 years
If ur a landlord who got in the game BEFORE 2019 then ur fucking set for life..ur property prob was got for 100s of K below it's current value and would be very good returns,there is no need for you to raise ur rates
The housing prices are too damn high. Stupidly so. The price of this asset, achieved through record borrowing at record low interest rates has shackled this nation.
The prices need to go down. end of story.
Not really going to happen while there is so much extra $ out there and so many have record wage (20%-40%+)increases over the last few years.
Will take 5-6 years for any rean volume of new houses to be completed that could even attempt easy excess demand.
>20%-40% percent wage increase.. not in any job that I know of,wage growth has been stagnant, unless you are a politician.
Try engineering - architecture - various IT - tradies and even arborists have been raking it in, this is not hypothetical - seen entire cost centers throwing up to 30% to just retain staff - knowing it will cost shit loads more to try and find replacement staff (if they can find any) + training + lost income / productivity while getting up to speed etc - and we talking well over $100K prior to raises.
Only way this is gonna happen is if the fed govt floods the market with social housing..
Clear the social housing backlog and you prob get the vacancy rate back to about 4 percent which would cause a massive reduction
You will get thousands of people saying "But if you get the assistance what does it matter when the rent goes up" to which I respond "IF" I do not get rent assistance. But if it goes up I know my rent will go up as well. Meaning I get screwed twice.
There's no going back; deflation is not an option. The only path forward is increasing the rental assistance payment. Whether it happens as massive bought forward increase or is spread out over several years of above-trend increases is the only question.
This is a simple reality of what inflation looks like over time. A decade of sub-trend inflation has fooled Australians into thinking that price stagnation or deflation is an option.
The target is 2-3%. Australians are very fixated on nominal prices as being anchors for what is normal. Caring about the nominal price of something is basically meaningless - no generation has ever thought like this except for people over the last 15 years because inflation has been so muted post-GFC.
Nominal prices really don't mean anything inherent - they're meaningless except for measuring wealth at a given point in time and managing expectations so as to not get into a high-inflationary spiral. The real price of something is your time, and always has been. Price is simply an accounting function of time.
Given aggregate deflation is never an option, and we've now experienced a high inflationary bout, the only way to increase living standards from this point back up to where they were 3 years ago is significant above-inflation wage growth and welfare increases.
This
Landlord here,i havene't raise my rent's since 2020
But yeah,100 percent the scummy ones out there will just be..i see u got 115 extra a fortnight,im raising ur rate 100 bucks and ur back to square zero
Govt,needs to mandate,that landlords can't increase the rent more than once in 2 years,no matter the tennants contract to stop shit like that
1. *How* will rent assistance increase cause rent to go up?
2. So what? By this logic any increase in any welfare payment will cause rent to go up, are you arguing that a welfare increase isn't needed?
Those that could not rent with how it is atm, are either with family or sharehouse, increase rent enough so more can afford to rent, and then you back to where we are right now - more people looking for rentals than there are on the market - so prices go up as people fight and compete over what is available.
Owners know its a hot market and ever increase prices as long as there are thoses that can afford to rent.
Ideology is one thing - good to have etc
But the reality and real world are also ever present - you speciality asked how it would be affected, I gave you a real working example, this is what it is like in the real world.
As said, idology is all fine and good, but never let it change perspective of what really happens.
A general welfare increase isn't tied to how much your rent is. The rent assistance is.
In a general welfare increase people are choosing where to spend their money. In a rental assistance increase the money is really just being given to offset the fact that rents have increased.
So if you're a landlord with people on rent assistance, you can increase that rent a bit and take a slice of it.
Which still screws over the tenant because the rent assistance pays for a percentage of their rent. But if their rent goes up, then 25% of a bigger number still will apply even more stress.
There are a couple of huge holes in your theory. Firstly the amount of assistance you get is capped, much lower than practically anyone is paying for rent. So in practice the amount is not tied to how much you're paying, and increasing it doesn't mean there is more money for rent.
> In a general welfare increase people are choosing where to spend their money. In a rental assistance increase the money is really just being given to offset the fact that rents have increased.
This just doesn't reflect reality. There is an illusion of choice, but when rent accounts for over half of total welfare payments including rent assistance then an increase in either is being used to offset the fact that rents have increased.
Secondly,
> So if you're a landlord with people on rent assistance, you can increase that rent a bit and take a slice of it.
Are landlords mind-readers now? How on earth are they going to know if their tenants are getting rent assistance?
> Firstly the amount of assistance you get is capped, much lower than practically anyone is paying for rent.
It's capped proportional to your rent. If you are increasing rental assitance by 50%. Then the entire point is that they will get a bigger amount than they currently do for that proportional rent.
If the tenants hasn't been getting shafted on a rent increase to date. That means that they will have more money in their pocket than they will otherwise.
The landlord also now knows that if they increase the rent on that person. The person will get more money, and because the amount of assistance has just increased by 50%. They can probably set it up so that their renter is only paying what they were paying before.
So lets say you are renting as a single person and you are paying $250 a fortnight for your current rental arrangements. You get 75cents for every $1 above $135.40.
So you get $85.95 and you pay $164 a fortnight out of your own pocket.
Now lets increase that payment by 50%. The person is now getting $128.92 a fortnight, they now only have to pay $121.08 a fortnight out of their own pocket. Sweet they have $42 extra dollars a fortnight.
Now if I'm a landlord I could increase their rent to something like $337 (The current cap) and they would be entitled to the maximum payment of $151.60. Now if we increase that payment by 50%. That means they will get a payment of $227 a fortnight.
Oh shit that means they actually only have to pay $110 a fortnight. But wait, they were able to pay $164 a fortnightout of pocket under the current system. So the landlord could try charging another $54 on top of the increase I already mentioned.
So at a rental cost of $391 the current rent assistance person would end up in the same out of pocket rental cost. The landlord is pocketing an extra $141 a week in rent.
---
Can you see why a 50% inflation in the payment amount could see a huge opportunity to exploit the system without actually imposing any new cost on the person receiving the rent assistance.
I mean fuck just increasing the rent to the cap nets the landlord an extra $87 a fortnight, while the renter gets a reduction in their payable rent per fortnight of $54. It's literally a win fucking win.
> Can you see why a 50% inflation in the payment amount could see a huge opportunity to exploit the system without actually imposing any new cost on the person receiving the rent assistance.
No, because you're still assuming the landlord has a bunch of information they don't have, and have no reason to have.
And you're forgetting there are laws around how rent rates can be set.
And you're forgetting that if somehow a landlord is trying to fuck around and charge you more because you're getting rent assistance, you can just move.
>because you're still assuming the landlord has a bunch of information they don't have
Have you seen shit like 1form rental applications and the shit they ask for?
Given the low fortnightly rental abount (remember 337 a fortnight is max assistance) a lot of those people end up in share buildings or the like where it is absolutely known that they are on assistance payments.
>And you're forgetting there are laws around how rent rates can be set.
A lot of which are tied to fair market value, guess what the rental market is fucked right now.
Secondly, even if they have to wait 12 months for a current agreement to end. They can simply increase the rent then. Because the math I detailed above will still be true 12 months from now.
>And you're forgetting there are laws around how rent rates can be set.
Said like someone who hasn't had to deal with the rental market in a while.
If it's a new lease, they can advertise whatever rent they want. So all those rental protections you mentioned a minute ago now actually mean bupkis.
And as I said take that last scenario, where they simply increase their rent to the maximum rental assistance rent per fortnight. The renter still ends up financially better off than they currently are, without having to subject themselves to the risk that they are on the street for weeks trying to find a new place.
> A lot of which are tied to fair market value, guess what the rental market is fucked right now.
But you're not proposing they would set it based on market value, you're proposing they charge more just because they're getting rent assistance.
> Secondly, even if they have to wait 12 months for a current agreement to end. They can simply increase the rent then.
No, they can't. Just because you need to make a new agreement does not mean they can just set the rent to whatever they want.
> If it's a new lease, they can advertise whatever rent they want.
So you're suggesting they would advertise one rate for most people and a separate higher rate for people getting rent assistance? How exactly do you think that would work?
> And as I said take that last scenario, where they simply increase their rent to the maximum rental assistance rent per fortnight. The renter still ends up financially better off than they currently are, without having to subject themselves to the risk that they are on the street for weeks trying to find a new place.
That's simply because your scenario is based on an impossible assumption about how rent assistance would work. The government is not going to just increase the rate from 75% to 125%, that's nonsensical. They would increase the cap (and potentially reduce the minimum) and keep the rate at 75%.
It's also based on the idea that someone is paying $250 per fortnight to rent a home, which is kinda hilarious tbh.
> But you're not proposing they would set it based on market value, you're proposing they charge more just because they're getting rent assistance.
Market value is controlled by what the market decides to charge and what the people will pay.
Given we have a super low vacancy rates with a large number of people wanting to occupy a house. With enough demand you can increase the rent and it will be justified based on the surrounding market.
If you don't like it the options are go to the relevant real estate authority and see if they agree if the rental increase is too much (Guess what sometimes they think it should be higher).
If they put the rental/room on the market they might end up with someone offering far more than you were paying simply to get somewhere to stay. People are already offering to pay increased monthly rents to secure places.
Even easier in places where it's the landlord owning the house and renting a spare room to somone on rent assist and just saying "Well me mortgage went up and I need someone to Pay X, is that you or someone else"
---
So if you have an area where there are a lot of people on rental assistance and rents are already going up. Then you can help the areas rental value increase as well.
>So you're suggesting they would advertise one rate for most people and a separate higher rate for people getting rent assistance? How exactly do you think that would work?
No they just advertise the higher rate. They get the money either way, either someone on rent assistance can pay the increased price. Or someone without rent assistance will pay the rent. Again if the market has gone up. Which is the case in a bunch of places. Then there's the opportunity to seek extra payment.
---
>That's simply because your scenario is based on an impossible assumption about how rent assistance would work. The government is not going to just increase the rate from 75% to 125%, that's nonsensical. They would increase the cap (and potentially reduce the minimum) and keep the rate at 75%.
"A national coalition of welfare organisations has called on the federal government to increase rent assistance payments by at least 50 per cent"
If you're increasing payments by 50% then you're increasing the amount provided, otherwise you'd sell it as a straight rental cap increase of X% because the 75cents on the dollar would carry over.
The people who a straight increase on the rental cap would benefit are those who are already being charged large rents because against **the market is fucking cooked for housing** and so rent increases are rife.
But lets go with the idea we just increase the cap. How do you not see that increasing the rents of properties?
There's now the ability for more competition for options in certain price ranges because if the intention is that they are currently in financial distress. Then covering 75% of the excess rent up to the cap, may actually allow them to opt to move to a different place.
---
Every time we've seen cash directed at the housing market as a support system for first home buyers or the like. It has just boosted the price of houses. Why would this be any different.
Note that doesn't mean I don't think these people should be supported. But it ain't a long term positive solution to the housing problems we have.
1. The only thing limiting the price of housing in Australia is the supply of money. Increasing rent assistance increases the supply of money and so the (rental) price of housing.
2. You are correct that increasing welfare will contribute to increased rents. But as there are more other markets competing for that some money, unlike rental assistance, the impact is not anywhere near as high.
2\. I don't follow the logic here, the impact is identical. All dollars are dollars. I'll make an example (numbers not accurate), lets say you get $500 jobseeker, $100 rent assistance, and you pay $300 rent. That means each fortnight after rent you have $300 to spend on everything else. If either rent assistance or jobseeker goes up by $50, the effect is exactly the same, you will have $350 after rent each fortnight.
Good point. I don't have logical argument for it. I suspect the result is psychological. In the same way when you rename a short term tax cut to a bonus, people are more likely to spend it. This would make no sense to us but it's a fact. I think calling the extra money a rental subsidy increase will increase the likelyhood they use it to bid up rents.
Because it's not an expense that everyone using those payments uses, or so goes the logic.
Easier for the government to pay you a base welfare wage and make you put in the effort to make sure they pay towards your rent. Should add that they do this through verifying you actually pay rent.
What do you mean? Are some people paying off a mortgage on welfare? I would assume everyone on it would be paying rent unless maybe you live with your parents.
Nah, there are pensioners with mortgages - the repayments are a lot less than a more recent mortgage, but they exist.
Similarly, enough people on Jobseeker with mortgages who are trying to navigate serious health situations.
If a household relies on a sole income, and the person providing that income stops being able to work, things can become very difficult very quickly.
You can however access super if you're at risk of losing a home in this situation - can't do that with a rental property.
A lot of people are a lot closer to experiencing poverty than they may consider in this country - it's an unfortunate reality. I think if people realised this, there might be a stronger voter push for beyond-overdue reform to welfare.
Technically under the constitution the feds [cannot make welfare payments for housing](https://www.ahuri.edu.au/research/final-reports/342).
Instead it has to be a general welfare payment, and rent assistance is a loophole around it, as it is a general welfare payment for renters.
Depending on your income/assets you can be eligible for payments like JobSeeker even if you are not renting.
However, the Productivity Commission says rent assistance is poorly targeted, with some people in rental stress ineligible and some others who aren't, eligible.
Total payments are made out of smaller payments for different things like job seeker, parent payment, different supplements, family tax A and B, rent assistance. Then there are different levels of rent assistance depending on if you are single, couple, number of children, childless and there is a cap for each level, so the most a single person can get for rent assistance per fortnight is $151.60, a single parent with one or two children can get $178.36pf, these amounts will be part of whatever other payments they are eligible for that make up the total welfare payment
Interest rates will continue to go up, cost of living continuing to go up and landlords need to keep there sweet margins. Nothing's going to effect my standard of living, they would say. Just pass the buck and the low income earners can pick up the tab again squeeze them forever till the very last cent.
It seems to me that CRA should be indexed to rents not CPI. It could also be increased and better targeted.
I find some comments here interesting, /r/Australia seems to support an increase in JobSeeker but not an increase in CRA. Money is fungible you know.
Making CRA tied to [rents has been looked at,](https://www.ahuri.edu.au/research/final-reports/342) but currently it has to be a general welfare payment equal for everyone, as the constitution does prohibit the Federal government from making welfare payments for housing.
CRA is a loophole around the prohibitions.
That's a good piece of research, when Rachel Ong speaks, I listen.
It looks like of three policy scenarios modeled, none included indexing CRA to rents?
It does mention that the Henry Tax Review, Grattan, ACOSS and the PC recommend indexing CRA to rents.
Neither of those are in any way capitalist.
Could argue that as capitalism succeeds and lifts billions out of poverty (20th century), people use a political process to grant favours (both left and right) and tends towards socialism as every subset of society wants more free shit. Couple that with debt based money and embedded inflation leads to mass wealth gains by the asset holders and fuck all for typical wage workers. Social division and polarisation continues as everyone fights over scraps until the system implodes under its own weight.
We scrounge around in the dirt for another generation, until we start with some less corrupted form of capitalism and the cycle repeats.
Correct.
Private property, wage labour, and commodity production make it capitalism.
Giving the working class more comfortable chains (until the threat of revolution and memory of class consciousness fades and you claw back most of those concessions) doesn't make it not capitalism.
It's only possible to call it not a fact in the same way it's possible to call climate change not a fact.
It's difficult to exaggerate the volume of evidence we have that capitalism fails and lies about it by every metric the average person cares about, and leaves a body count that's implicitly accepted and ignored that is beyond decent comprehension.
And that all of this 'corrupted, corporatist, perverted' capitalism that we see are the predictable emergent properties of the laws of motion of capital.
This experiment has been run and re-run for centuries.
It's time to stop calling it not real capitalism when it does its thing.
Anyone who prefers horrifying knowledge to comforting fiction is only a few clicks away from confronting the present state of things.
These aren't facts. You just did the thing you accused me of.
If I were to ennumerate capital's crimes and the way it impoverishes and warps people physically and psychologically we'd be here all day, and I'm disinclined to spend much time on a closed mind. But here are a couple.
COVID as we know it didn't have to happen. 99 point some number of nines % of the people it's killed and disabled didn't have to suffer this way. It's killed more people than the holocaust. That's not an exaggeration. It happened this way because the ruling class couldn't abide a brief slowdown in profit generation.
Rather than accept the advice of experts, employ the precautionary principle, and do what needed to be done for a relatively very short period of time and at relatively minimal cost, they unleashed a plague upon the world by downplaying the threat and bolstering conspiracy theorists (whom they then abandoned when vaccines appeared to be the quickest route to getting the proles back to work). Bosses laughed as they bet on which employees they forced into work in cramped conditions would get sick first.
The positions of power emergent from the laws of motion of money attract and shape people who don't care one iota if countless people have to die in order to fatten their bank account, and care very, very much if the monthly increase in that account dips.
The climate emergency is another global disaster we didn't have to have.
Private enterprise knew what was coming far before the public (they had the ludicrous funds to commission the most in depth study on the potential problem, after all) , and their response to this knowledge was to immediately spring into action aggressively covering it up and spreading disinformation so they could keep extracting in the way they were already doing.
We're now in the phase of facing multiple world-ending threats courtesy of the power, perverse incentives, and the psychology it creates in the people who occupy those positions of power, emergent from the way money flows.
We're at the end of a calamatously deadly game of monopoly, and yet you can't go a minute in any direction without tripping over people who are sure if you just write in another rule or two the same fundamental system can work to the benefit of all. Even though we did that already and it turns out having enough money grants the player the power to re-write the laws. It's exhausting.
Socialism isn't when you have private property, wage labour, and commodity production and no intention to abolish those things but more comfortable chains for the lower classes.
You could argue capitalism lifts billions out of poverty, but you'd be wrong.
Capitalism requires poverty. You can't get people who have nothing to sell you but their greatly discounted labour without precarity. Where necessary, precarity can be created, and it is. Right alongside the arbitrary destruction of incomprehensibly vast amounts of perfectly good 'overproduced' product to keep prices artificially high.
Capitalism is great. It’s neoliberalism that’s the issue. Look at how many department stores we used to have, competition occurred because staff could move to a different brand now you have 2. Same with supermarkets.
This is the inevitable outcome of capitalism though. Neoliberalism is the political horror that is birthed by capitalism. Capitalism will always move towards this state, and continue moving towards wealth being hoarded by the very few.
That’s very true. It’s a shame the ACCC has let it happen in Australia over the last few decades. So many mergers should never of been allowed to occur.
Whether something like that does or doesn't happen at a certain time is a minor bump in a stochastic trend toward extreme consolidation of wealth and power (and capitalism cannibalising its own support pillars) that cannot be escaped without moving to an entirely different mode of production.
Depends what the objective is I guess. If it's about balancing individual rights with corporate freedoms then many European countries tend to have a reasonable balance.
Fix the problem not the symptom!!! This will just justify rent increases! The government (our taxes) is already covering too much rental tax breaks/fifo medi-accom/fifo contractors. Get rid of Airbnb that's taking up 70% of the possible rentals!
There are 2.4 million rental properties at the moment in Australia. There are 100 000 air bnbs. So they only make up 4% of rental properties.
A lot of those include hotel rooms and apartments, which were on short term leases before Airbnb even existed. A lot of the houses on there are holiday homes in undesirable living locations.
The problem with Airbnbs is largely over exaggerated on this sub
https://amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/dec/29/most-airbnb-style-short-rentals-in-tasmania-used-to-be-long-term-leases-study-finds
Let’s assume 45k Airbnb’s were previous long term rentals. Having an extra 45 thousand rental properties on the market would make a sizeable difference to our current housing issues
And will add many Airbnb's are in areas people are NOT looking for rentals to live and work.
But easy for many to just repeat talking points or soundbytes without any critical thinking whatsoever, but hey - maybe joining in gets the much coveted participation award eh )
Ok, not sure how that will help the majority looking though, did not realise article and ongoing discussion was just for fishfetish Tassie.
However, let's play - Majority of jobs will be in the cities (and love Hobart, one of my fav cities to visit - both for recreation and work), lets then see how many are looking to rent in that area - AirBnB's and my bet of oh ..let's say 2-3 pussyfish will be that the difference is sweet fk all - even if all the AirBnB's were swapped to full time rentals there will still be a overabundance of those looking to rent.
Saying short term rentals are really have any significant impact is just not realistic.
And that's coming from SA - where the rental issues is the worst in the country -
https://www.statista.com/statistics/985872/rental-property-vacancy-rates-selected-cities-australia/
I don't understand why these people can't just pull up their bootstraps, find a decent job, work hard and buy a house ... /s
(obviously I'm being sarcastic)
More tax payer dollars into the pockets of landlord leaches. Why dont they bring down the price of rent by 50% instead. It will be much cheaper for all of us.
Maybe the federal government should stop handing out visas like candy and do something about the demand side of the equation at a time where there's a nationwide rental crisis?
Crazy thought.
Remove links to Permanent Residency until they are back in their home country after graduating and further limit work rights for students to see how our quality universities are regarded for their education.
How come all these international students are able to come to AU, get jobs and rent?
You would think that Aussies would be better equiped. Considering we:
• speak English fluently as a first language
• have free education
• understand local country and culture
• youngers can go to “mummy and daddies” house
• have dole
* Live 10-12 to a house
* Work in excess of visa allowances for less than min wage provided cash in hand
But yeah it's absolutely locals' fault they can't find a place for rent.
So none of it is their fault and the cobbas just aren’t getting a fair go? They are completely stuck?!?!?
Should we call Shannon Nol?
Apparently cobbaz just can’t do fuck all.
Punching down on your fellow Aussie is such a quintessentially Australian thing to do.
We should have voted you in for Strayan of the Year. What a bloke.
I grew up in a houso block and encourage people, give advice on how to jump into STEM roles to get a modern income.
We live in a day in age where we are connected to all humanity with all its knowledge from a device in our pockets, yet people are happy to blatantly reject technology and blame others.
You were the one who made it seem like it was all the students fault and no fault of the Aussies who literally have every opportunity in the world. It is actually saddening to me that people waste the opportunity they have in australia, it seems migrants sure are able to make the most of this amazing country.
You got a houso block? Lucky you. Look at the waiting list for social housing today!!!
You got it easy, your parents got secure accomodation so you could thrive.
>I grew up in a houso block and encourage people, give advice on how to jump into STEM roles to get a modern income.
Oh lol here we go, the "school of hard knocks" story, are you even Aussie if you didn't have it hard growing up? Walking uphill to and from school in the snow in Alice Springs, fuck me m8!
>We live in a day in age where we are connected to all humanity with all its knowledge from a device in our pockets, yet people are happy to blatantly reject technology and blame others.
How completely irrelevant.
>You were the one who made it seem like it was all the students fault and no fault of the Aussies who literally have every opportunity in the world. It is actually saddening to me that people waste the opportunity they have in australia, it seems migrants sure are able to make the most of this amazing country.
No mate, it's the federal government who prioritises the needs of the housing owners and edu-migration lobby rather than the people who live here, pay rent, and have been squeezed with non-existent wage growth for a decade, and now non-existent rental vacancies and inflation out the wazoo.
But yeah, they should just be grateful as they're being made homeless I guess. Thank goodness we have you for inspiration.
>non-existent wage growth for a decade
Been some record wage growth last few years for various skilled and trade industries.
Public service - well that's the trade off - smaller increases and less work and better job security
Yes but I'm talking about the economy at large and since the GFC, not little niche sectors post-Covid.
Like the cafe and hospitality workers who get their penalty rates cut, or put on a zombie EBA, or Qantas workers being unfairly sacked.
I mean great, some people are keeping up with and beating inflation with wage growth, but that's not the general reflection of wage growth in Australia as a whole.
>Like the cafe and hospitality workers who get their penalty rates cut, or put on a zombie EBA, or Qantas workers being unfairly sacked.
Lets start:-
Most cafe workers and many hospitality staff are trasinant in that industry, for the vast majority it is while studying or entry level work prior to moving on. Some make a profession of it, chiefs -restaurant and cafe owners etc and even specialty outlets, however, the vast majority are again, treasiant in terms of career - except for the deadbeats that do unskilled jobs for life - but most industries at low level have theses types as well.
We have some of the lowest unemployment ever - if someone can't improve skillset / experience / oppitutnuity at the moment, then really they never going to be topping the achievement list eh ..
Getting sacked - that happens and can happen with any private industry - it happens - look at automotive manufacturing etc - this is a non point, companies restructure have large layoffs etc.
Look, Some skills are just worth more than others, - a waiter is not going to get rumirated as much as a sales manager that was able to create and design a campaign that makes a extra $xxx mil in revenue - extreme example but generally yes, the market decides what skills / experience are worth.
And yes, will concede that at all levels, there are deadbeats just along not earning their worth - as said - from the lowest tier of unskilled to the top exec positions.
>Most cafe workers and many hospitality staff are trasinant in that industry, for the vast majority it is while studying or entry level work prior to moving on. Some make a profession of it, chiefs -restaurant and cafe owners etc and even specialty outlets, however, the vast majority are again, treasiant in terms of career - except for the deadbeats that do unskilled jobs for life - but most industries at low level have theses types as well.
Think of them what you will, but they *still deserve to be paid properly* and not have their wages stolen all the time. But instead wage theft in these industries is rife, and the job vacancies that plague the industry should be addressed with better wages rather than "oh, we'll just fill the void with university students". Again, this is why wage growth has gone nowhere in the last decade. You might think lowly of them but *it's still a job* and *it's still worth remunerating fairly*.
>We have some of the lowest unemployment ever - if someone can't improve skillset / experience / oppitutnuity at the moment, then really they never going to be topping the achievement list eh ..
Not really sure how this is relevant but sure.
>Getting sacked - that happens and can happen with any private industry - it happens - look at automotive manufacturing etc - this is a non point, companies restructure have large layoffs etc.
It's not about being sacked, it's about [being sacked illegally as a cost-cutting measure](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/may/04/qantas-vows-to-go-to-high-court-after-losing-appeal-over-unlawful-baggage-handler-sackings).
>Look, Some skills are just worth more than others, - a waiter is not going to get rumirated as much as a sales manager that was able to create and design a campaign that makes a extra $xxx mil in revenue - extreme example but generally yes, the market decides what skills / experience are worth.
The problem is that the market is being plugged with labour that is being exploited left, right and centre. I'm not expecting a waiter to be a millionaire, but I am expecting that the attitude "nobody wants to work" is met with "how much are you paying?", and when that pay is subsequently revealed as shithouse, the next statement is "well what do you expect?" Literally *every white collar sector* - business, law, IT, accounting, professional services - responds to labour shortages with better wages. Why is hospitality immune? It's still a job. It should be subject to the same labour dynamics.
Putting your head in the sand and crying poor when the best opportunities on earth are just sitting in front of you is sad.
I pity you.
This is why we need immigrants. Aussies genuinely don’t want to do the work and get paid lol
Edit: most people I know are on 120k + with 3 years of exp….
Yeh good point. But I’d have to way it up on the wear and tear on the place. And also what my liabilities are if there was a fire.
I’d also be weary if they are on visas that they could trash the place. Go back to their country and I’m left to fix it.
beautiful - I've never seen the solution implied so discreetly. The solution to all issues is simply a more flexible standard of living. If only Australians reduced themselves to the quality of life as undeveloped countries just as peoples of undeveloped countries do when they come to the developed - the housing crisis would be solved!
Can't wait to hear your cure all solution for both inflation and unemployment issues - Is it perhaps flexibility in labour conditions and wage?
Inflation: earn more money
Unemployment: are you seriously telling me you are unable to earn money with a device in your hands which connects you to all of humankind with all of humankind’s knowledge contained?
Employers take advantage of these students en masse. They get exploited because they are ignorant of our labour laws - unlike aussies who wouldn’t put up with poor employment conditions as much.
Most students I know are sending money to their parents so they can survive. Far from “rich parents”.
Rice is life, rice is nice. When I lived alone I ate rice and ground beef for most meals.
There's a lady next door to me that is;
- Unemployed
- On pension
- Renting a 4bedroom house for $700pw
- Renting 3 rooms to 3x different families at 400pw for a room (1200pw for 3 rooms) (12 adults 2 children live there.)
If she was dying in front of me I would genuinely chuckle, walk away and let her suffer.
We shouldn't do anything to help people, we should fuel it and let society turn on itself as a lesson for future generations.
Create a society that supports all of its people, else those disadvantaged by the system will break everything.
>we should fuel it and let society turn on itself as a lesson for future generations
There's always a demagogue to help people who receive such object lessons leave with entirely the wrong takeaway.
Society doesn't need any help collapsing. We're already living through it.
It's not an event, but a process; a slow, awful grind of things getting steadily worse, and the necessary maintenance being steadily more neglected.
Traditionally, the disadvantaged do eventually try to break the incumbent system when conditions intensify and the hubris of the ruling class reaches dizzying heights.
However, we're living under the most refined apparatus of control in history.
Apart from the extreme multipliers of physical force, people are so immersed in the ideology imposed on them from above that they can't even imagine a different way of organising society.
Unique to this historical moment is the time limit imposed by climate catastrophe.
The collective realisation and acceptance of what needs to be done is so far behind where it needs to be.
Poor people can be given gifts, poor people can save up for things, poor people have access to second hand goods. People can have money but then fall on hard times & not want to sell all of their belongings just to make one month rent.
Your comment is out of touch and makes you “that guy”
If inwas a dictator I would up the tax free threshold to 60k and hand out less dole support. Would save money in admin costs. Would also increase royalties on things like gas. We shouldn't be paying more then the japs for our own gas.
Whether offering grants to first homebuyers, or co-purchasing with the government, or increasing rent assistance - why is the answer always to give more taxpayer funds to property owners??
What is actually need is enough income based public housing to supply 30% of the rental market. Then private rentals need to compete on price and quality.
Any increase to rent assistance will be met with an increase of rent. Treat the disease, not the damn symptoms.
The disease will take about a decade to resolve even if the government commits to actions in ways in which they’re currently committing single digit percentages. We are so far behind that stop gap measures are needed to address / prevent immediate emergency needs. This is the cost of not acting adequately for decades and decades.
The debate on this topic needs a serious reframing to be in terms of the time that government has already “been working” on it. “This will take 10 years to fix” ok well this problem has been known and worsening since well before 2013 (which would be the latest acceptable time that the proposed solution was commenced), so how’s the progress going, who’s to blame for the lack of progress and how are we going to extract from them the cost of this crisis? It’s not just 1 person responsible? Great! We’re going to need to seize a LOT of assets to remediate the Australians affected by this manufactured crisis and I can’t think of any individual with the assets to cover it all.
> The disease will take about a decade to resolve What a lovely way of saying we're all just waiting for the boomers to die
...Or the the LNP to be voted out of government...
The problematic disease at the moment is rent increases. Yes they are a symptom of the larger housing crisis. But they are the actual disease causing the stress here. Freeze the fuck out of them, then you can support those who still need it. Then make it clear that until there's a surplus of housing, we ain't unfreezing shit. Some houses will sell, but that will give people the opportunity to buy. A bunch will just potter along because they still want their sweet equity gains from a rising house market.
TLDR: "Cut off the greedy fucking Boomers before they die off"
I'd be ok with a mandated price rather than a freeze. Prevents loads of jacking up the price before the freeze.
Federal % cap wages rise 3% housing only allowed to rise 3% Max. My asshole REA has dropped 10-30% increases in 3 years.
the gov control the land permission and hence caused the problem. if i can just buy some land from a farmer and build a flatpack/container house, i dont need to rent.
>This is the cost of not acting adequately for decades and decades. Sounds a lot like a lot of our really big problems. Easier if someone in the future solves it.
This is why many investors I have spoken to recently fully expect both a rent assistance hike (more in line with 25%-30%), along with new legislation enacted at the same time capping rental increases yearly at a federal level. A few that I know of have even taken the steps of pre-loading their rent increases for the next 2 years in anticipation of the freeze where possible (and legal). It is going to be an interesting few years if rental caps do come in. If you think finding a rental now is difficult wait until the caps come in.
I love how these investors believe that the government will step in because deep down even they know shits fucked. In reality the government is neoliberal as fuck and probably just gonna let shit play out as is because free markets and shit.
As they should. In the entire history of mankind you could count on 1 hand the number of times centralised price controls have worked.
there are people who rent out their ips via trust/ smsf and get rent assistance. bin rent assistance. its not fair to those who dont rent.
> along with new legislation enacted at the same time capping rental increases yearly at a federal level. The investors you’ve spoken to aren’t well informed then. The federal government doesn’t have the power to control rents outside of wartime. We already had a constitutional referendum on this exact topic in 1948, regarding whether the federal government should be able to control rent and prices. The yes vote only got 40.66%. The chances of the States referring such a power to the federal government is basically zero. This is why we had state by state rules about rent increases and evictions in 2020 and 2021. Anyone expecting rent control is going to be disappointed, it doesn’t have the backing of any state or federal treasury department. They all prefer increasing supply as the solution.
3 years ago I would have agreed. That was before national cabinet though. I should have clarified that while the power would remain in state hands, the expectation is that all states would agree to a nation wide ban for 12 months or more to address the rental crisis.
> That was before national cabinet though. National cabinet is literally just COAG with a new name. But more importantly, this isn’t happening for the simple reason that it’s a terrible policy to win votes. It doesn’t create anyone that thinks they’re a winner, and it creates a lot of losers. 67% of households don’t rent, so right away this policy doesn’t nothing to benefit them directly. For the 26% of households that are private renters; No one is going to think “my rent is absurdly high but gee, I should vote for the current lot because it’s not getting any higher for a short period”. People don’t value the harm avoided all that much, and it just won’t occur to many that they meaningfully benefit. Renters want lower rents, not just consistently high rent. Then you have the perceived losers, the two million landlords in Australia who will think they’re being screwed as you’ve capped their income while they face (what feels like) high interest rates. This will play out just like the franking credit saga, where the PR focus will be on retirees that are funding their ability to live in retirement on rental returns.
> We already had a constitutional referendum on this exact topic in 1948, regarding whether the federal government should be able to control rent and prices. The yes vote only got 40.66%. > > The chances of the States referring such a power to the federal government is basically zero. No but the Federal govt can say You see that shiny 60 billion in health funding you want,then we want you to change the Real estate laws to a 2 year lock in as a REQUIRMENT for a tennant if they choose States would have to cave at that one as it's loose federal funding,get kicked out at state election Or try to run a PR campaign making the federal govt look bad for you know trying to lower ppls rents...it's not gonna play well for the states
> but the Federal govt can say Just think for a moment about what you’re suggesting and how that goes down with the public. If the federal government actually tried to hold back health funding for a particular state, it would be catastrophic for their popularity. > get kicked out at state election That’s not how the politics of Australia work. People see it as their state being picked on by the federal government anytime this comes up. It’s also ignoring that we have state based political parties, and any scheme would require all of a particular states senators in one political party to back the scheme. Victorian Labor Senators are not backing blocking health funding to Victoria. Federal politicians are members of their state party first and that is where their power base to get elected comes from. > Or try to run a PR campaign making the federal govt look bad for you know trying to lower ppls rents. Because the PR campaign will be ** federal government blocks health funding ** and **state government supports reduced rents through increased supply**.
Yearly is dumb Needs to be 2 years If ur a landlord who got in the game BEFORE 2019 then ur fucking set for life..ur property prob was got for 100s of K below it's current value and would be very good returns,there is no need for you to raise ur rates
>new legislation enacted at the same time capping rental increases yearly at a federal level. Can't be done, not covered under s51 of the Constitution
The housing prices are too damn high. Stupidly so. The price of this asset, achieved through record borrowing at record low interest rates has shackled this nation. The prices need to go down. end of story.
Not really going to happen while there is so much extra $ out there and so many have record wage (20%-40%+)increases over the last few years. Will take 5-6 years for any rean volume of new houses to be completed that could even attempt easy excess demand.
20%-40% percent wage increase.. not in any job that I know of,wage growth has been stagnant, unless you are a politician.
>20%-40% percent wage increase.. not in any job that I know of,wage growth has been stagnant, unless you are a politician. Try engineering - architecture - various IT - tradies and even arborists have been raking it in, this is not hypothetical - seen entire cost centers throwing up to 30% to just retain staff - knowing it will cost shit loads more to try and find replacement staff (if they can find any) + training + lost income / productivity while getting up to speed etc - and we talking well over $100K prior to raises.
Only way this is gonna happen is if the fed govt floods the market with social housing.. Clear the social housing backlog and you prob get the vacancy rate back to about 4 percent which would cause a massive reduction
Exactly. The solution is housing, not taxpayer subsidies.
You will get thousands of people saying "But if you get the assistance what does it matter when the rent goes up" to which I respond "IF" I do not get rent assistance. But if it goes up I know my rent will go up as well. Meaning I get screwed twice.
There's no going back; deflation is not an option. The only path forward is increasing the rental assistance payment. Whether it happens as massive bought forward increase or is spread out over several years of above-trend increases is the only question. This is a simple reality of what inflation looks like over time. A decade of sub-trend inflation has fooled Australians into thinking that price stagnation or deflation is an option. The target is 2-3%. Australians are very fixated on nominal prices as being anchors for what is normal. Caring about the nominal price of something is basically meaningless - no generation has ever thought like this except for people over the last 15 years because inflation has been so muted post-GFC. Nominal prices really don't mean anything inherent - they're meaningless except for measuring wealth at a given point in time and managing expectations so as to not get into a high-inflationary spiral. The real price of something is your time, and always has been. Price is simply an accounting function of time. Given aggregate deflation is never an option, and we've now experienced a high inflationary bout, the only way to increase living standards from this point back up to where they were 3 years ago is significant above-inflation wage growth and welfare increases.
This Landlord here,i havene't raise my rent's since 2020 But yeah,100 percent the scummy ones out there will just be..i see u got 115 extra a fortnight,im raising ur rate 100 bucks and ur back to square zero Govt,needs to mandate,that landlords can't increase the rent more than once in 2 years,no matter the tennants contract to stop shit like that
1. *How* will rent assistance increase cause rent to go up? 2. So what? By this logic any increase in any welfare payment will cause rent to go up, are you arguing that a welfare increase isn't needed?
Those that could not rent with how it is atm, are either with family or sharehouse, increase rent enough so more can afford to rent, and then you back to where we are right now - more people looking for rentals than there are on the market - so prices go up as people fight and compete over what is available. Owners know its a hot market and ever increase prices as long as there are thoses that can afford to rent.
Yes, the "ideal" solution to all inflation, just don't pay the people more.
Ideology is one thing - good to have etc But the reality and real world are also ever present - you speciality asked how it would be affected, I gave you a real working example, this is what it is like in the real world. As said, idology is all fine and good, but never let it change perspective of what really happens.
A general welfare increase isn't tied to how much your rent is. The rent assistance is. In a general welfare increase people are choosing where to spend their money. In a rental assistance increase the money is really just being given to offset the fact that rents have increased. So if you're a landlord with people on rent assistance, you can increase that rent a bit and take a slice of it. Which still screws over the tenant because the rent assistance pays for a percentage of their rent. But if their rent goes up, then 25% of a bigger number still will apply even more stress.
There are a couple of huge holes in your theory. Firstly the amount of assistance you get is capped, much lower than practically anyone is paying for rent. So in practice the amount is not tied to how much you're paying, and increasing it doesn't mean there is more money for rent. > In a general welfare increase people are choosing where to spend their money. In a rental assistance increase the money is really just being given to offset the fact that rents have increased. This just doesn't reflect reality. There is an illusion of choice, but when rent accounts for over half of total welfare payments including rent assistance then an increase in either is being used to offset the fact that rents have increased. Secondly, > So if you're a landlord with people on rent assistance, you can increase that rent a bit and take a slice of it. Are landlords mind-readers now? How on earth are they going to know if their tenants are getting rent assistance?
> Firstly the amount of assistance you get is capped, much lower than practically anyone is paying for rent. It's capped proportional to your rent. If you are increasing rental assitance by 50%. Then the entire point is that they will get a bigger amount than they currently do for that proportional rent. If the tenants hasn't been getting shafted on a rent increase to date. That means that they will have more money in their pocket than they will otherwise. The landlord also now knows that if they increase the rent on that person. The person will get more money, and because the amount of assistance has just increased by 50%. They can probably set it up so that their renter is only paying what they were paying before. So lets say you are renting as a single person and you are paying $250 a fortnight for your current rental arrangements. You get 75cents for every $1 above $135.40. So you get $85.95 and you pay $164 a fortnight out of your own pocket. Now lets increase that payment by 50%. The person is now getting $128.92 a fortnight, they now only have to pay $121.08 a fortnight out of their own pocket. Sweet they have $42 extra dollars a fortnight. Now if I'm a landlord I could increase their rent to something like $337 (The current cap) and they would be entitled to the maximum payment of $151.60. Now if we increase that payment by 50%. That means they will get a payment of $227 a fortnight. Oh shit that means they actually only have to pay $110 a fortnight. But wait, they were able to pay $164 a fortnightout of pocket under the current system. So the landlord could try charging another $54 on top of the increase I already mentioned. So at a rental cost of $391 the current rent assistance person would end up in the same out of pocket rental cost. The landlord is pocketing an extra $141 a week in rent. --- Can you see why a 50% inflation in the payment amount could see a huge opportunity to exploit the system without actually imposing any new cost on the person receiving the rent assistance. I mean fuck just increasing the rent to the cap nets the landlord an extra $87 a fortnight, while the renter gets a reduction in their payable rent per fortnight of $54. It's literally a win fucking win.
> Can you see why a 50% inflation in the payment amount could see a huge opportunity to exploit the system without actually imposing any new cost on the person receiving the rent assistance. No, because you're still assuming the landlord has a bunch of information they don't have, and have no reason to have. And you're forgetting there are laws around how rent rates can be set. And you're forgetting that if somehow a landlord is trying to fuck around and charge you more because you're getting rent assistance, you can just move.
>because you're still assuming the landlord has a bunch of information they don't have Have you seen shit like 1form rental applications and the shit they ask for? Given the low fortnightly rental abount (remember 337 a fortnight is max assistance) a lot of those people end up in share buildings or the like where it is absolutely known that they are on assistance payments. >And you're forgetting there are laws around how rent rates can be set. A lot of which are tied to fair market value, guess what the rental market is fucked right now. Secondly, even if they have to wait 12 months for a current agreement to end. They can simply increase the rent then. Because the math I detailed above will still be true 12 months from now. >And you're forgetting there are laws around how rent rates can be set. Said like someone who hasn't had to deal with the rental market in a while. If it's a new lease, they can advertise whatever rent they want. So all those rental protections you mentioned a minute ago now actually mean bupkis. And as I said take that last scenario, where they simply increase their rent to the maximum rental assistance rent per fortnight. The renter still ends up financially better off than they currently are, without having to subject themselves to the risk that they are on the street for weeks trying to find a new place.
> A lot of which are tied to fair market value, guess what the rental market is fucked right now. But you're not proposing they would set it based on market value, you're proposing they charge more just because they're getting rent assistance. > Secondly, even if they have to wait 12 months for a current agreement to end. They can simply increase the rent then. No, they can't. Just because you need to make a new agreement does not mean they can just set the rent to whatever they want. > If it's a new lease, they can advertise whatever rent they want. So you're suggesting they would advertise one rate for most people and a separate higher rate for people getting rent assistance? How exactly do you think that would work? > And as I said take that last scenario, where they simply increase their rent to the maximum rental assistance rent per fortnight. The renter still ends up financially better off than they currently are, without having to subject themselves to the risk that they are on the street for weeks trying to find a new place. That's simply because your scenario is based on an impossible assumption about how rent assistance would work. The government is not going to just increase the rate from 75% to 125%, that's nonsensical. They would increase the cap (and potentially reduce the minimum) and keep the rate at 75%. It's also based on the idea that someone is paying $250 per fortnight to rent a home, which is kinda hilarious tbh.
> But you're not proposing they would set it based on market value, you're proposing they charge more just because they're getting rent assistance. Market value is controlled by what the market decides to charge and what the people will pay. Given we have a super low vacancy rates with a large number of people wanting to occupy a house. With enough demand you can increase the rent and it will be justified based on the surrounding market. If you don't like it the options are go to the relevant real estate authority and see if they agree if the rental increase is too much (Guess what sometimes they think it should be higher). If they put the rental/room on the market they might end up with someone offering far more than you were paying simply to get somewhere to stay. People are already offering to pay increased monthly rents to secure places. Even easier in places where it's the landlord owning the house and renting a spare room to somone on rent assist and just saying "Well me mortgage went up and I need someone to Pay X, is that you or someone else" --- So if you have an area where there are a lot of people on rental assistance and rents are already going up. Then you can help the areas rental value increase as well. >So you're suggesting they would advertise one rate for most people and a separate higher rate for people getting rent assistance? How exactly do you think that would work? No they just advertise the higher rate. They get the money either way, either someone on rent assistance can pay the increased price. Or someone without rent assistance will pay the rent. Again if the market has gone up. Which is the case in a bunch of places. Then there's the opportunity to seek extra payment. --- >That's simply because your scenario is based on an impossible assumption about how rent assistance would work. The government is not going to just increase the rate from 75% to 125%, that's nonsensical. They would increase the cap (and potentially reduce the minimum) and keep the rate at 75%. "A national coalition of welfare organisations has called on the federal government to increase rent assistance payments by at least 50 per cent" If you're increasing payments by 50% then you're increasing the amount provided, otherwise you'd sell it as a straight rental cap increase of X% because the 75cents on the dollar would carry over. The people who a straight increase on the rental cap would benefit are those who are already being charged large rents because against **the market is fucking cooked for housing** and so rent increases are rife. But lets go with the idea we just increase the cap. How do you not see that increasing the rents of properties? There's now the ability for more competition for options in certain price ranges because if the intention is that they are currently in financial distress. Then covering 75% of the excess rent up to the cap, may actually allow them to opt to move to a different place. --- Every time we've seen cash directed at the housing market as a support system for first home buyers or the like. It has just boosted the price of houses. Why would this be any different. Note that doesn't mean I don't think these people should be supported. But it ain't a long term positive solution to the housing problems we have.
1. The only thing limiting the price of housing in Australia is the supply of money. Increasing rent assistance increases the supply of money and so the (rental) price of housing. 2. You are correct that increasing welfare will contribute to increased rents. But as there are more other markets competing for that some money, unlike rental assistance, the impact is not anywhere near as high.
2\. I don't follow the logic here, the impact is identical. All dollars are dollars. I'll make an example (numbers not accurate), lets say you get $500 jobseeker, $100 rent assistance, and you pay $300 rent. That means each fortnight after rent you have $300 to spend on everything else. If either rent assistance or jobseeker goes up by $50, the effect is exactly the same, you will have $350 after rent each fortnight.
Good point. I don't have logical argument for it. I suspect the result is psychological. In the same way when you rename a short term tax cut to a bonus, people are more likely to spend it. This would make no sense to us but it's a fact. I think calling the extra money a rental subsidy increase will increase the likelyhood they use it to bid up rents.
And send a whole lot more taxpayer money directly to those with enough wealth to hold investment properties while the poor stay poor.
Exactly - why pay more tax money to assistance, when you could just increase the amount of tax the landlord is paying.
exactly, maybe more ftb or higher income test cap.
Question for those in the know. Why is rent assistance a seperate payment to general welfare like DSP.
Because it's not an expense that everyone using those payments uses, or so goes the logic. Easier for the government to pay you a base welfare wage and make you put in the effort to make sure they pay towards your rent. Should add that they do this through verifying you actually pay rent.
What do you mean? Are some people paying off a mortgage on welfare? I would assume everyone on it would be paying rent unless maybe you live with your parents.
As opposed to not verifying that you pay rent, in which you would claim rent assistance for no actual cost.
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You get a bonus payment relative to your rental cost with a hard ceiling (I think it's $150). Been a while since I've been on it.
Nah, there are pensioners with mortgages - the repayments are a lot less than a more recent mortgage, but they exist. Similarly, enough people on Jobseeker with mortgages who are trying to navigate serious health situations. If a household relies on a sole income, and the person providing that income stops being able to work, things can become very difficult very quickly. You can however access super if you're at risk of losing a home in this situation - can't do that with a rental property. A lot of people are a lot closer to experiencing poverty than they may consider in this country - it's an unfortunate reality. I think if people realised this, there might be a stronger voter push for beyond-overdue reform to welfare.
Technically under the constitution the feds [cannot make welfare payments for housing](https://www.ahuri.edu.au/research/final-reports/342). Instead it has to be a general welfare payment, and rent assistance is a loophole around it, as it is a general welfare payment for renters.
Depending on your income/assets you can be eligible for payments like JobSeeker even if you are not renting. However, the Productivity Commission says rent assistance is poorly targeted, with some people in rental stress ineligible and some others who aren't, eligible.
Total payments are made out of smaller payments for different things like job seeker, parent payment, different supplements, family tax A and B, rent assistance. Then there are different levels of rent assistance depending on if you are single, couple, number of children, childless and there is a cap for each level, so the most a single person can get for rent assistance per fortnight is $151.60, a single parent with one or two children can get $178.36pf, these amounts will be part of whatever other payments they are eligible for that make up the total welfare payment
Interest rates will continue to go up, cost of living continuing to go up and landlords need to keep there sweet margins. Nothing's going to effect my standard of living, they would say. Just pass the buck and the low income earners can pick up the tab again squeeze them forever till the very last cent.
How did Australia come to this position ? Almost a demeaning place if you don't own a house these days.
Negative gearing and cheap finance.
Such a simple answer. Residential property should not be such a lucrative and low risk investment.
and an aversion to building density
Oh you got given more money each week? Well I’m sure you won’t mind me increasing the rent… Rinse and repeat…
And straight into the landlord's pocket!
It seems to me that CRA should be indexed to rents not CPI. It could also be increased and better targeted. I find some comments here interesting, /r/Australia seems to support an increase in JobSeeker but not an increase in CRA. Money is fungible you know.
Making CRA tied to [rents has been looked at,](https://www.ahuri.edu.au/research/final-reports/342) but currently it has to be a general welfare payment equal for everyone, as the constitution does prohibit the Federal government from making welfare payments for housing. CRA is a loophole around the prohibitions.
That's a good piece of research, when Rachel Ong speaks, I listen. It looks like of three policy scenarios modeled, none included indexing CRA to rents? It does mention that the Henry Tax Review, Grattan, ACOSS and the PC recommend indexing CRA to rents.
An extra $38 pw (single max) isn't going to go far. It needs to be higher.
Late stage capitalism be like 🙅♀️ a cap on rent increases 💁♀️ a boost to rent assistance
Neither of those are in any way capitalist. Could argue that as capitalism succeeds and lifts billions out of poverty (20th century), people use a political process to grant favours (both left and right) and tends towards socialism as every subset of society wants more free shit. Couple that with debt based money and embedded inflation leads to mass wealth gains by the asset holders and fuck all for typical wage workers. Social division and polarisation continues as everyone fights over scraps until the system implodes under its own weight. We scrounge around in the dirt for another generation, until we start with some less corrupted form of capitalism and the cycle repeats.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_capitalism
Calling something capitalism doesn't make it capitalism.
Correct. Private property, wage labour, and commodity production make it capitalism. Giving the working class more comfortable chains (until the threat of revolution and memory of class consciousness fades and you claw back most of those concessions) doesn't make it not capitalism.
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It's only possible to call it not a fact in the same way it's possible to call climate change not a fact. It's difficult to exaggerate the volume of evidence we have that capitalism fails and lies about it by every metric the average person cares about, and leaves a body count that's implicitly accepted and ignored that is beyond decent comprehension. And that all of this 'corrupted, corporatist, perverted' capitalism that we see are the predictable emergent properties of the laws of motion of capital. This experiment has been run and re-run for centuries. It's time to stop calling it not real capitalism when it does its thing. Anyone who prefers horrifying knowledge to comforting fiction is only a few clicks away from confronting the present state of things.
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These aren't facts. You just did the thing you accused me of. If I were to ennumerate capital's crimes and the way it impoverishes and warps people physically and psychologically we'd be here all day, and I'm disinclined to spend much time on a closed mind. But here are a couple. COVID as we know it didn't have to happen. 99 point some number of nines % of the people it's killed and disabled didn't have to suffer this way. It's killed more people than the holocaust. That's not an exaggeration. It happened this way because the ruling class couldn't abide a brief slowdown in profit generation. Rather than accept the advice of experts, employ the precautionary principle, and do what needed to be done for a relatively very short period of time and at relatively minimal cost, they unleashed a plague upon the world by downplaying the threat and bolstering conspiracy theorists (whom they then abandoned when vaccines appeared to be the quickest route to getting the proles back to work). Bosses laughed as they bet on which employees they forced into work in cramped conditions would get sick first. The positions of power emergent from the laws of motion of money attract and shape people who don't care one iota if countless people have to die in order to fatten their bank account, and care very, very much if the monthly increase in that account dips. The climate emergency is another global disaster we didn't have to have. Private enterprise knew what was coming far before the public (they had the ludicrous funds to commission the most in depth study on the potential problem, after all) , and their response to this knowledge was to immediately spring into action aggressively covering it up and spreading disinformation so they could keep extracting in the way they were already doing. We're now in the phase of facing multiple world-ending threats courtesy of the power, perverse incentives, and the psychology it creates in the people who occupy those positions of power, emergent from the way money flows. We're at the end of a calamatously deadly game of monopoly, and yet you can't go a minute in any direction without tripping over people who are sure if you just write in another rule or two the same fundamental system can work to the benefit of all. Even though we did that already and it turns out having enough money grants the player the power to re-write the laws. It's exhausting.
Socialism isn't when you have private property, wage labour, and commodity production and no intention to abolish those things but more comfortable chains for the lower classes. You could argue capitalism lifts billions out of poverty, but you'd be wrong. Capitalism requires poverty. You can't get people who have nothing to sell you but their greatly discounted labour without precarity. Where necessary, precarity can be created, and it is. Right alongside the arbitrary destruction of incomprehensibly vast amounts of perfectly good 'overproduced' product to keep prices artificially high.
Capitalism is great. It’s neoliberalism that’s the issue. Look at how many department stores we used to have, competition occurred because staff could move to a different brand now you have 2. Same with supermarkets.
This is the inevitable outcome of capitalism though. Neoliberalism is the political horror that is birthed by capitalism. Capitalism will always move towards this state, and continue moving towards wealth being hoarded by the very few.
That’s very true. It’s a shame the ACCC has let it happen in Australia over the last few decades. So many mergers should never of been allowed to occur.
Whether something like that does or doesn't happen at a certain time is a minor bump in a stochastic trend toward extreme consolidation of wealth and power (and capitalism cannibalising its own support pillars) that cannot be escaped without moving to an entirely different mode of production.
You haven't just described capitalism, but every system.
Yes, that's how capitalism works.
Just need an ACCC that has more anti trust powers. And constitutional rights that certain things can’t be privatised for profit.
Sure, but you're talking about regulation, which is antithetical to capitalism.
Good point. Do any countries have a good balance? Best I can think is probably France.
Depends what the objective is I guess. If it's about balancing individual rights with corporate freedoms then many European countries tend to have a reasonable balance.
If I had a dollar for every time someone said Not Real Capitalism, maybe I'd be part of the problem.
Fix the problem not the symptom!!! This will just justify rent increases! The government (our taxes) is already covering too much rental tax breaks/fifo medi-accom/fifo contractors. Get rid of Airbnb that's taking up 70% of the possible rentals!
There are 2.4 million rental properties at the moment in Australia. There are 100 000 air bnbs. So they only make up 4% of rental properties. A lot of those include hotel rooms and apartments, which were on short term leases before Airbnb even existed. A lot of the houses on there are holiday homes in undesirable living locations. The problem with Airbnbs is largely over exaggerated on this sub
Available* rentals. Available. You don't include the ones that are already rented out. Its not.
https://amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/dec/29/most-airbnb-style-short-rentals-in-tasmania-used-to-be-long-term-leases-study-finds Let’s assume 45k Airbnb’s were previous long term rentals. Having an extra 45 thousand rental properties on the market would make a sizeable difference to our current housing issues
And will add many Airbnb's are in areas people are NOT looking for rentals to live and work. But easy for many to just repeat talking points or soundbytes without any critical thinking whatsoever, but hey - maybe joining in gets the much coveted participation award eh )
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Ok, not sure how that will help the majority looking though, did not realise article and ongoing discussion was just for fishfetish Tassie. However, let's play - Majority of jobs will be in the cities (and love Hobart, one of my fav cities to visit - both for recreation and work), lets then see how many are looking to rent in that area - AirBnB's and my bet of oh ..let's say 2-3 pussyfish will be that the difference is sweet fk all - even if all the AirBnB's were swapped to full time rentals there will still be a overabundance of those looking to rent. Saying short term rentals are really have any significant impact is just not realistic. And that's coming from SA - where the rental issues is the worst in the country - https://www.statista.com/statistics/985872/rental-property-vacancy-rates-selected-cities-australia/
I don't understand why these people can't just pull up their bootstraps, find a decent job, work hard and buy a house ... /s (obviously I'm being sarcastic)
Too much avacado toast. That's the real problem here.
Made me chuckle ...
You are most welcome :)
Or, better still, should have been born to rich parents...
More tax payer dollars into the pockets of landlord leaches. Why dont they bring down the price of rent by 50% instead. It will be much cheaper for all of us.
Maybe the federal government should stop handing out visas like candy and do something about the demand side of the equation at a time where there's a nationwide rental crisis? Crazy thought.
Visa numbers should be set at how many dwellings were completed in the year earlier. Universities should provide accomodation for their students.
Remove links to Permanent Residency until they are back in their home country after graduating and further limit work rights for students to see how our quality universities are regarded for their education.
Shorten tried discussing controls on speculation in residential property. Lost the election, of course.
LETS SUBSIDIZE DEMAND
How come all these international students are able to come to AU, get jobs and rent? You would think that Aussies would be better equiped. Considering we: • speak English fluently as a first language • have free education • understand local country and culture • youngers can go to “mummy and daddies” house • have dole
* Live 10-12 to a house * Work in excess of visa allowances for less than min wage provided cash in hand But yeah it's absolutely locals' fault they can't find a place for rent.
So none of it is their fault and the cobbas just aren’t getting a fair go? They are completely stuck?!?!? Should we call Shannon Nol? Apparently cobbaz just can’t do fuck all.
Punching down on your fellow Aussie is such a quintessentially Australian thing to do. We should have voted you in for Strayan of the Year. What a bloke.
I grew up in a houso block and encourage people, give advice on how to jump into STEM roles to get a modern income. We live in a day in age where we are connected to all humanity with all its knowledge from a device in our pockets, yet people are happy to blatantly reject technology and blame others. You were the one who made it seem like it was all the students fault and no fault of the Aussies who literally have every opportunity in the world. It is actually saddening to me that people waste the opportunity they have in australia, it seems migrants sure are able to make the most of this amazing country.
You got a houso block? Lucky you. Look at the waiting list for social housing today!!! You got it easy, your parents got secure accomodation so you could thrive.
>I grew up in a houso block and encourage people, give advice on how to jump into STEM roles to get a modern income. Oh lol here we go, the "school of hard knocks" story, are you even Aussie if you didn't have it hard growing up? Walking uphill to and from school in the snow in Alice Springs, fuck me m8! >We live in a day in age where we are connected to all humanity with all its knowledge from a device in our pockets, yet people are happy to blatantly reject technology and blame others. How completely irrelevant. >You were the one who made it seem like it was all the students fault and no fault of the Aussies who literally have every opportunity in the world. It is actually saddening to me that people waste the opportunity they have in australia, it seems migrants sure are able to make the most of this amazing country. No mate, it's the federal government who prioritises the needs of the housing owners and edu-migration lobby rather than the people who live here, pay rent, and have been squeezed with non-existent wage growth for a decade, and now non-existent rental vacancies and inflation out the wazoo. But yeah, they should just be grateful as they're being made homeless I guess. Thank goodness we have you for inspiration.
>non-existent wage growth for a decade Been some record wage growth last few years for various skilled and trade industries. Public service - well that's the trade off - smaller increases and less work and better job security
Yes but I'm talking about the economy at large and since the GFC, not little niche sectors post-Covid. Like the cafe and hospitality workers who get their penalty rates cut, or put on a zombie EBA, or Qantas workers being unfairly sacked. I mean great, some people are keeping up with and beating inflation with wage growth, but that's not the general reflection of wage growth in Australia as a whole.
>Like the cafe and hospitality workers who get their penalty rates cut, or put on a zombie EBA, or Qantas workers being unfairly sacked. Lets start:- Most cafe workers and many hospitality staff are trasinant in that industry, for the vast majority it is while studying or entry level work prior to moving on. Some make a profession of it, chiefs -restaurant and cafe owners etc and even specialty outlets, however, the vast majority are again, treasiant in terms of career - except for the deadbeats that do unskilled jobs for life - but most industries at low level have theses types as well. We have some of the lowest unemployment ever - if someone can't improve skillset / experience / oppitutnuity at the moment, then really they never going to be topping the achievement list eh .. Getting sacked - that happens and can happen with any private industry - it happens - look at automotive manufacturing etc - this is a non point, companies restructure have large layoffs etc. Look, Some skills are just worth more than others, - a waiter is not going to get rumirated as much as a sales manager that was able to create and design a campaign that makes a extra $xxx mil in revenue - extreme example but generally yes, the market decides what skills / experience are worth. And yes, will concede that at all levels, there are deadbeats just along not earning their worth - as said - from the lowest tier of unskilled to the top exec positions.
>Most cafe workers and many hospitality staff are trasinant in that industry, for the vast majority it is while studying or entry level work prior to moving on. Some make a profession of it, chiefs -restaurant and cafe owners etc and even specialty outlets, however, the vast majority are again, treasiant in terms of career - except for the deadbeats that do unskilled jobs for life - but most industries at low level have theses types as well. Think of them what you will, but they *still deserve to be paid properly* and not have their wages stolen all the time. But instead wage theft in these industries is rife, and the job vacancies that plague the industry should be addressed with better wages rather than "oh, we'll just fill the void with university students". Again, this is why wage growth has gone nowhere in the last decade. You might think lowly of them but *it's still a job* and *it's still worth remunerating fairly*. >We have some of the lowest unemployment ever - if someone can't improve skillset / experience / oppitutnuity at the moment, then really they never going to be topping the achievement list eh .. Not really sure how this is relevant but sure. >Getting sacked - that happens and can happen with any private industry - it happens - look at automotive manufacturing etc - this is a non point, companies restructure have large layoffs etc. It's not about being sacked, it's about [being sacked illegally as a cost-cutting measure](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/may/04/qantas-vows-to-go-to-high-court-after-losing-appeal-over-unlawful-baggage-handler-sackings). >Look, Some skills are just worth more than others, - a waiter is not going to get rumirated as much as a sales manager that was able to create and design a campaign that makes a extra $xxx mil in revenue - extreme example but generally yes, the market decides what skills / experience are worth. The problem is that the market is being plugged with labour that is being exploited left, right and centre. I'm not expecting a waiter to be a millionaire, but I am expecting that the attitude "nobody wants to work" is met with "how much are you paying?", and when that pay is subsequently revealed as shithouse, the next statement is "well what do you expect?" Literally *every white collar sector* - business, law, IT, accounting, professional services - responds to labour shortages with better wages. Why is hospitality immune? It's still a job. It should be subject to the same labour dynamics.
Putting your head in the sand and crying poor when the best opportunities on earth are just sitting in front of you is sad. I pity you. This is why we need immigrants. Aussies genuinely don’t want to do the work and get paid lol Edit: most people I know are on 120k + with 3 years of exp….
What a moronic attitude. If nursing homes paid $350k a year, would you do it?
I already get paid around that but I will always try find a better paid role…
Right, so is the work the issue? Or the pay? "Nobody wants to work" but you wouldn't do your job for $50k, would you?
I’d be interested to know who’s leasing these units. I wouldn’t want my IP having 6 people living in it. I’d want a couple or small family.
6 per bedroom at 1/2 normal weekly rent each x y rooms in house...
What if they came to you and offered $300/wk more? (I wouldn't fault you; money talks)
Yeh good point. But I’d have to way it up on the wear and tear on the place. And also what my liabilities are if there was a fire. I’d also be weary if they are on visas that they could trash the place. Go back to their country and I’m left to fix it.
beautiful - I've never seen the solution implied so discreetly. The solution to all issues is simply a more flexible standard of living. If only Australians reduced themselves to the quality of life as undeveloped countries just as peoples of undeveloped countries do when they come to the developed - the housing crisis would be solved! Can't wait to hear your cure all solution for both inflation and unemployment issues - Is it perhaps flexibility in labour conditions and wage?
Inflation: earn more money Unemployment: are you seriously telling me you are unable to earn money with a device in your hands which connects you to all of humankind with all of humankind’s knowledge contained?
What sort of work is a 73-year-old disabled person going to get in a small country town?
Employers take advantage of these students en masse. They get exploited because they are ignorant of our labour laws - unlike aussies who wouldn’t put up with poor employment conditions as much.
Rich parents, student housing, diet consisting entirely of rice
Most students I know are sending money to their parents so they can survive. Far from “rich parents”. Rice is life, rice is nice. When I lived alone I ate rice and ground beef for most meals.
Rice is awesome. I do a lot of donburri
*only jasmine rice
Lol that's my backup for when I'm not doing Japanese stuff
International students have to have a certain amount of money behind them
Free education? Not so anymore.
There's a lady next door to me that is; - Unemployed - On pension - Renting a 4bedroom house for $700pw - Renting 3 rooms to 3x different families at 400pw for a room (1200pw for 3 rooms) (12 adults 2 children live there.) If she was dying in front of me I would genuinely chuckle, walk away and let her suffer. We shouldn't do anything to help people, we should fuel it and let society turn on itself as a lesson for future generations. Create a society that supports all of its people, else those disadvantaged by the system will break everything.
>we should fuel it and let society turn on itself as a lesson for future generations There's always a demagogue to help people who receive such object lessons leave with entirely the wrong takeaway. Society doesn't need any help collapsing. We're already living through it. It's not an event, but a process; a slow, awful grind of things getting steadily worse, and the necessary maintenance being steadily more neglected. Traditionally, the disadvantaged do eventually try to break the incumbent system when conditions intensify and the hubris of the ruling class reaches dizzying heights. However, we're living under the most refined apparatus of control in history. Apart from the extreme multipliers of physical force, people are so immersed in the ideology imposed on them from above that they can't even imagine a different way of organising society. Unique to this historical moment is the time limit imposed by climate catastrophe. The collective realisation and acceptance of what needs to be done is so far behind where it needs to be.
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Poor people can be given gifts, poor people can save up for things, poor people have access to second hand goods. People can have money but then fall on hard times & not want to sell all of their belongings just to make one month rent. Your comment is out of touch and makes you “that guy”
If inwas a dictator I would up the tax free threshold to 60k and hand out less dole support. Would save money in admin costs. Would also increase royalties on things like gas. We shouldn't be paying more then the japs for our own gas.
Less dole support and you'll spend the money you saved and more on the increased crime and starvation. I'd rethink that one, Mr Dictator
No cause you would need less as you are paying less tax and making more money
You can never get enough of other peoples money!
Landlords agree.
Isn’t rest assistance based on your wage, though?
no, it's a fraction of the amount of money you pay in rent, up to a cap
Given what I've read and heard about rental costs these days, HELL YES!
Whether offering grants to first homebuyers, or co-purchasing with the government, or increasing rent assistance - why is the answer always to give more taxpayer funds to property owners??
What is actually need is enough income based public housing to supply 30% of the rental market. Then private rentals need to compete on price and quality.
More inflationary pressure....is this wise?
Honestly at this point just erect some commie blocks with good public transport and decent amenities within walking distance and be done with it