Affordable Housing Solutions

Australia can learn plenty of lessons about how to make housing more affordable for essential workers from overseas.

An analysis by Professor of Planning at Western Sydney University, Nicky Morrison, says that soaring housing costs in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane are squeezing essential workers out of the communities in which they work.

Anglicare Australia’s latest Rental Affordability Snapshot of properties listed for rent shows only 3.7% are affordable for a teacher, 2.2% for an ambulance worker, 1.4% for a nurse and 0.9% for an early childhood educator.

She says one solution is for Australian developers to be required to allocate affordable housing for essential workers with prices below market rates for renting and buying.

Innovative financial models, such as shared equity schemes in which the Government or another investor covers some of the cost of buying the home in exchange for an equivalent share in the property, have also worked overseas.

Morrison also believes the use of surplus public land for essential worker housing can work.

“It is a strategic way to deliver affordable housing near key public sector employers,” Morrison says.

“We need to ensure essential workers can afford to live near their workplaces while not sidelining everyone else in need of affordable housing.”