Australia is facing an affordable housing crisis. Many Australians, often the younger generations, are having major difficulties in getting mortgages, while houses have become unaffordable.

In addition, it is difficult to find an affordable rental home. It is no secret that many families are struggling economically, and many households are spending good proportion of their income on housing with many facing a daily choice between housing, food, and healthcare. 

Owning a home used to be  the great Australian dream. However, house prices have spiralled out of reach of many Australians over the last decade putting homeownership out of reach for many people often the young.  Moreover, wages have not kept up with the costs of homes. Last year, Australia’s house prices increased by 22.1% (the fastest year increase since 1989) that is ten time the pace of wages, which went up by 2.2%, with debt-to-income ratio reaching dangerous level of 6.3 (ABS).

We should support first time homebuyers but despite various incentives over the years, house prices continue to rise beyond their limit. We need to slow or even stop the uncontrollable rise in house prices. We need to slow down investment in the housing market as investors have become the major buyers at the expense of first-time homebuyers in recent years.