Rental-Insights-A-COVID-19-Collection - Flipbook - Page 4
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RENTAL INSIGHTS:
A COVID-19 COLLECTION
Towards a national
discussion on housing
Emma Baker
and Lyrian Daniel
(Editors)
COVID-19—a dual health and economic
crisis—has almost certainly changed
the way we think about our housing,
what we want from it, how we use
it, and what our housing aspirations
will be in the future. This Collection
reflects on a timely new evidence
base describing the Australian rental
sector in the emerging COVID-19 era.
Our aim in producing the Collection is
that it should be a starting point of an
important national discussion about the
housing, and housing system, we need.
Rental is Australia’s fastest growing
tenure. Roughly one in three Australians
are renters, and one in five are landlords.
The housing stock within the sector
is diverse, though there is increasing
evidence of fairly widespread problems,
such as poor dwelling conditions
(e.g. across maintenance, and basic
health and safety requirements),
tenure insecurity, limited tenant
rights, and unaffordability.
We have not yet seen the full health or
economic effects of COVID-19 but, for
many reasons, the rental sector
will almost certainly be where many
of Australia’s big challenges sit.
In the early stages of Australia’s
COVID-19 pandemic, renters were
especially vulnerable to economic
effects—due to, for example,
disproportionate employment in the
sectors hardest hit by the economic
shutdown, as well as lower average
wealth, and slightly weaker attachment
to the labour market. Economic effects
quickly translated, for many renters, into
tenure insecurity, with eviction risk so
widespread that eviction moratoriums
were one of the first responses
legislated by the states. With the
progression of the pandemic and the
subsequent lockdowns, many existing
inequalities within the rental sector, as
well as in comparison to people who
own their home, have been amplified.
Importantly though, until now, we have
not had a robust, nation-wide dataset
on rental conditions, so our ability to
formulate evidence-based responses
has been restricted.
In mid-2020, Australia’s largest dataset
of tenant households and their living
conditions was collected. The Australian
Rental Housing Conditions Dataset
(ARHCD)1 was designed to meet the
needs of the research and policy
community for robust, nation-wide
data on housing conditions and tenant
characteristics. This dataset provides
the most current comprehensive data
collection of the Australian rental sector
and has a dedicated COVID-19 module2
that enables important insights into
the experiences and effects of the
pandemic across the renter population.
Roughly one in three Australians are
renters, and one in five are landlords.
1
2
In advance of the public release of
this dataset, we invited leading thinkers
from housing, economics, policy, urban
planning, and epidemiology to explore
the data, and tell the pressing stories
arising from it. Interestingly, while each
of the 20 contributions to this Collection
differ, a series of ‘echoes’ exist between
the stories, which should almost
certainly demand our attention.
• Children, especially those living with
a sole parent, are a group of particular
concern. Households with children
are, for example more likely to live
in poorer quality housing (such as
damp, plumbing and wiring problems).
Sole parent households containing
children, are also the most likely
household type to report that their
homes were inadequate for work or
study. Children are also at high risk of
living in households where the family
had difficulty keeping warm in winter.
• The mental health effects of
lockdown appear to be substantial
and widespread, with almost half
of all renters reporting a decline in
their mental health during COVID-19.
Some groups within the population,
for example people with unaffordable
housing or those living in poor
condition dwellings, had a marked
decrease in their mental health
during the pandemic. Loneliness
and isolation were key concerns,
especially for older renters.
• There is a clear indication that the
economic effects on households are
yet to be fully realised, because they
are currently hidden by temporary
solutions, such as savings and
superannuation, or interventions
like JobKeeper, rent deferment,
and eviction moratoriums.
There are many more stories to be told,
and the challenge posed to every reader
of this Collection is to ask questions, tell
more stories, and start thinking about
the housing we want and need
for a post-pandemic world.
Baker, E., Beer, A., Baddeley, M., London, K., Bentley, R., Stone, W., Rowley, S., Daniel, L., Nygaard, C., Hulse, K., Lockwood, T. (2020) The Australian
Rental Housing Conditions Dataset, doi:10.26193/IBL7PZ, ADA Dataverse, V1.
Baker, E., Bentley, R., Beer, A. and Daniel, L. (2020) Renting in the time of COVID-19: understanding the impacts, AHURI Final Report No. 340,
Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute Limited, Melbourne, https://www.ahuri.edu.au/research/final-reports/340, doi:10.18408/
ahuri3125401.
