Tuesday, 12 November 2024

Housing

Gabrielle DE VIETRI (Richmond) (19:12): (917) My adjournment is for the Minister for Housing, and the action I seek is to review the definition of ‘affordable housing’ to ensure that it is genuinely affordable. What does affordable housing actually mean? For most people it means that you can pay for the home that you live in, put food on the table, go to the doctor, maybe even save a little for emergencies or for the future. Experts define it as paying at most 30 per cent of your income on rent or a mortgage. But for Labor the word ‘affordable’ has lost all meaning.

The law says that ‘affordable’ can be anything that is appropriate for people earning up to $74,000 a year or families earning up to $154,000 a year. But get this: the government has left what it considers appropriate entirely up to developers. Homes Victoria have made the perverse promise that so-called affordable homes under them will be never more than market rent – in a housing crisis where market rent is through the roof. But do not worry, they have capped it at 30 per cent of the median income. But that is not the tenant’s income – no, that would make it genuinely affordable. They have capped it at the median income for the area, which means that if you earn less than the median income – well, you would not be eligible for one of the government’s so-called affordable homes in the first place, but if you were, you would be guaranteed to be living in housing stress.

Let us take a closer look at one of the government’s so-called affordable homes. These two-bedroom units in Coburg are advertised for $530 a week, $10 more than the median rent in the area. Whoever lives there would have to earn $92,000 a year just to avoid rental stress. Make it make sense. Under this smoke-and-mirrors definition, Labor is selling off vast tracts of public land with the promise that developers will build 10 per cent affordable housing. Never mind the 90 per cent considered in the unaffordable category, under the current laws this poxy commitment will never deliver genuinely affordable housing, because whatever is built by developers will be determined by profit unless we demand a social return. That is why the Greens are calling for the government to build public housing on public land and to make ‘affordable’ genuinely affordable.