The role and potential of the private rental market in providing affordable housing to people on low and moderate incomes is emerging as a key issue because significant numbers of households who twenty years ago would have obtained affordable housing in the public sector are now unable to access that system.
At the same time the private rental market has not been responsive to consumer demand from households on low and moderate incomes
In August 2005 the Commonwealth, State and Territory Ministers for Housing, Local Government and Planning agreed to a ‘Framework for National Action on Affordable Housing’ for determining ways of meeting the growing shortfall in affordable housing. It is important to note that they perceived ‘affordable housing’ as being across all tenures: ‘affordable housing is housing which is affordable for low and moderate income households across home ownership, private rental as well as public rental tenures.’ For the purposes of this paper the private rental market is defined as ‘occupied private dwellings in which the household pays rent to either a real estate agent or a person not living in the same household’. This is the standard Australian Bureau of Statistics’ definition.
Given theses changes in policy at both the Federal and State levels, how well does the private rental market meet the needs of low-income households?