By Dr Ray Moynihan and originally published in echo.net.au (The Byron Echo)
The crisis of unaffordable and insecure rentals here is not news, but right now there’s a real opportunity to help fix it.
Nationally, the federal Senate is investigating the ‘worsening rental crisis.’ A tripartisan committee wants to hear the first-hand experiences of renters. They want to know what can ‘reduce rents or limit rent rises’, how leases can be longer, and ‘renters’ rights’ improved.
At the same time, the NSW government wants submissions on how to make rental laws fairer.
Given this region is among the least affordable and most unfair in the nation – where renters suffer the toxic inflationary cocktail of holiday-letting, covid migration, and floods – those inquiries want to hear from us.
‘The rental crisis is real and it’s happening in Ballina, Lennox, Byron, and Bruns’, says Cathy Serventy, general manager for housing at local non-profit Social Futures.
‘We’d been in crisis for years, and then a natural disaster turned it into a catastrophe.’
‘In Byron, even people who work at Social Futures can’t afford to rent a place by themselves,’ Serventy told me.
She and colleagues see families with children forced to leave schools and friends, to chase affordable rents. People facing the humiliation of invasive lease applications, and the brutality of eviction and homelessness.
Byron now has the highest number of rough sleepers in the state, surpassing even the City of Sydney. But even for renters with a roof over their heads, stress can breed sleeplessness and suffering.
Just ask any friends or family unlucky enough to be trying to make a home in the local ‘rental market’.
A third of Australian households now rent. Out-of-control rent rises directly damage the quality of their lives. In Byron Shire, rents have risen by around 60 per cent in six years.
A staggering 50 per cent of tenants here are in ‘rental stress’, defined as more than 30 per cent of income going on rents.
While there are complex causes, the rise of Airbnb, Stayz and other platforms is clearly a key factor.
Just months ago, the Independent Planning Commission (IPC) held hearings about Council’s push for a 90-day cap on short-term rentals. A local professor famously described the crisis as ‘almost dystopian… undermining the fabric of society’.
The key expert report to the commission was damning, finding that in Byron, ‘Airbnb is equivalent to 83 per cent of the total rental stock’. In 2022, there was a massive 34 per cent drop in availability of two-bedroom homes for private rentals, at the same time as a 20 per cent increase for Airbnb.
‘We can call it a crisis both in terms of affordability and availability’ wrote authors from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute. Essential workers including those in cleaning, hospitality, teaching, and nursing ‘will be increasingly unable to live and work in the township,’ they wrote, echoing what every local already knows.
The evidence and the community spoke. The commission listened. It recommended an even tougher 60-day cap, to incentivise the return of houses to long-term rental.
An expert on both Airbnb and the wider crisis is University of NSW’s Dr Chris Martin, who argues there’s been ‘far too much accommodation of landlords and property owners’ in housing policy in Australia......
Read the full article by Dr Moynihan at https://www.echo.net.au/2023/07/cruelty-of-rental-crisis-now-centre-stage/
♦ Dr Ray Moynihan is an honorary Assistant Professor at Bond, who’s worked for ABC Four Corners and been a Harkness Fellowship at Harvard. Currently a Greens volunteer, his views are his own.
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