Housing affordability
Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:22): (1010) My adjournment matter tonight is to the Minister for Consumer Affairs, and the action that I seek is that she make renting more affordable in Victoria. What does a sardine have in common with a renter? The answer is that they are both getting packed in. Admittedly, sardines are going into cans with oil, but renters are being forced more and more often to move into share houses to keep up with the ever-rising cost of rent. Most of us, I would think, have some good memories of the fun of share houses filled with friends and good times. But equally we all have a horror story or two about an awful housemate, one who never quite had the rent money or did not seem to understand the function of the shower curtain so the shared bathroom would be flooded every other morning when you headed to uni, or perhaps they bought a new speaker and decided to blast Fleetwood Mac, the same song every other day, all the time, to the point where you got breach notices from the neighbours. The possibilities are endless. Sharing a house can be great, and it suits many people, but it should not be the case that people are sharing out of desperation because it is all that they can afford.
For some people, it is just not even an option. For various reasons there are those who need to live in a place on their own because of their physical requirements or their mental health or whatever it might be. We need to live in a state where people can afford this option too. The same stats that show the increased popularity of share houses also show that they are going up in price significantly. Surprise, surprise: rents for houses with five bedrooms or more rose 8.7 per cent over the year to June, and a flow-on effect of this is that larger families are now also having trouble finding affordable homes that suit their needs. No shade on share houses, but we need this Labor government to get involved and stop rents from continuing to rise. We cannot just force more and more people to live together. Rising rents are already stretching people to breaking point. It is just not sustainable for them to continue to rise. Labor, step in now, limit rent rises and keep rents at affordable levels.