“Having a roof over your head is essential to wellbeing and flourishing,” writes Senior Social Justice Advocate Mark Zirnsak.
By Mark Zirnsak
The Uniting Church in Australia has understood that the Gospel calls us to seek the wellbeing and flourishing of all people and the natural environment.
Having a roof over your head is essential to wellbeing and flourishing. Housing impacts the ability of people to participate in their community. Access to jobs, education, and health care services is affected by whether a person has affordable, appropriate, safe and secure housing.
For the last two years, concerns about homelessness and housing have been the top priority for members of congregations in the Synod who connect with the Justice and International Mission Cluster.
There are certainly reasons to be concerned about the situation with housing in Australia. Federal and State governments have failed to adequately invest in housing, with an ongoing decline in public housing across Australia. Government-run public housing provides the greatest level of security for the most vulnerable and marginalised people in our community.
Today, home ownership rates in Australia are falling sharply, and housing stress is increasing. Secure housing in Australia is increasingly out of reach for a growing proportion of the population. The proportion of households living in a home they own outright or within a mortgage in Australia is 13 per cent below the OECD average and falling. Over a million lower-income households are paying housing costs that exceed the affordability benchmark of 30 per cent of household income.
Current Federal Government tax policy settings favour protecting the property values of existing homeowners and investors at the expense of those experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity. The Everybody’s Home campaign has stated that Australia’s current tax treatment of housing subsidies favours property investors at the expense of people trying to buy a home. Tax giveaways to property investors fuel speculative investment and high house price inflation, causing house prices to rise much faster than incomes. The growth in housing prices that outstrips increases in income for most people has enormous implications for the wellbeing of Australians and future social cohesion.
The Synod and Uniting Vic.Tas are members of the Everybody’s Home campaign.
Social housing is the combination of public housing and housing run by not-for-profit community organisations like Uniting Vic.Tas. Social housing is essential for putting a roof over the heads of the most vulnerable people. Australia lags well behind European countries in providing social housing, with only 4 per cent of Australian housing being social housing compared to 8 per cent across the European Union countries. Australia also lags behind New Zealand, Canada and the US.
Further, family and domestic violence is the leading cause of homelessness for women. Of women and girls seeking a roof over their heads, 45 per cent are survivors of family and domestic violence. In Victoria, in the 2022-2023 financial year, 54 per cent of all women, young people and children who visited a specialist homelessness service reported they had experienced family violence. A lack of housing for those fleeing family and domestic violence can force them to return to abusive partners. Women fleeing abusive partners have reported being forced to sleep in their cars.
In Victoria, the lack of social housing means that children, women, and young people who have been identified as needing urgent housing as a result of family and domestic violence are waiting an average of 19.5 months to get into social housing.
Addressing these severe housing problems requires the Federal Government to reform the tax system to make it easier for people on lower incomes to purchase homes. Furthermore, the Everybody’s Home campaign believes that Australian governments need to collectively build 47,000 homes each year as social housing each for the next 20 years.
If you are concerned about the housing problems in Australia and want to advocate for reforms, please get in touch with the JIM Cluster, if you are not already on our supporter list, by email at JusticeandInternationalMission@victas.uca.org.au
Mark Zirnsak is the Synod’s Senior Social Justice Advocate
