Rental-Insights-A-COVID-19-Collection - Flipbook - Page 8
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RENTAL INSIGHTS:
DETERIORATING
RENTAL AFFORDABILITY
DETERIORATING RENTAL AFFORDABILITY
Hal Pawson
UNSW Sydney
Low-income renters
pushed further into
rental stress
Key findings
Why is it important?
Who is most affected?
Only a little over half
of low-income tenants
(59%) consider their rent
‘affordable’—56 per cent
of private tenants and 71
per cent of social renters.
The significant incidence of rental stress
among tenants in public and community
housing (even in ‘normal times’)
conflicts with the expectation that rents
(generally) pegged at 25 per cent of
household income provide a guarantee
of affordability for social renters.
Post-rent deprivation in social
housing
Even in social housing, one in six (16%)
report that household income absorbed
by rent normally leaves them with
insufficient funds for food, clothing
or other basic essentials.
However, it confirms earlier research
findings5 that a significant proportion
of tenants in public and community
housing are subject to (income-geared)
rents that are too high or incomes that
are too low to leave sufficient funds for
basic essentials.
Income losses during the pandemic
pushed up the incidence of such
‘post-rent deprivation’ to 22 per cent
of all low-income tenants.
Families with children—both single
parent and two-parent families—were
most likely to be affected by post-rent
deprivation in social housing. This
was true for more than a fifth of these
groups (21%), as compared with only
13 per cent of single people living alone.
At the same time, because of their
greater overall representation in the
sector, childless households accounted
for most of the social renters subject
to rental stress as defined in this way.
Pushed into rental stress by
the pandemic
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
in pushing tenants into rental stress
is highly related to age. Among lowincome renters, this scenario had
affected 11 per cent of tenants aged
18–29, but only 1 per cent of those
aged over 50.
The impact of the
COVID-19 pandemic
in pushing tenants
into rental stress is
highly related to age.
5
As indicated in the word cloud, many
of those involved had simply lost
employment, faced reductions in casual
work hours or overtime, or lost wages
when compelled to take leave. Others
had seen their small business collapse
or had to cease earning to cover
childcare when schools were closed.
Burke, T., Stone, M. and Ralston, L. (2011) The residual income method: a new lens on housing affordability and market behaviour, Final Report No.
176, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute Limited, Melbourne, https://www.ahuri.edu.au/research/final-reports/176, doi: 10.18408/
ahuri3125401.
