A city with no grandchildren? That’s just the start

In February of this year, Productivity NSW commissioner Peter Achterstraat gave a bleak warning about Sydney’s housing stock: “If we don’t act, we could become a city with no grandchildren.”

Housing in the city has become so unaffordable that young families are moving out, buying on the Central Coast, in regional NSW, or as far afield as other Australian capital cities to get themselves on the property ladder.

But, as reported by Kristy Johnson in today’s Sun-Herald, Sydney is not only risking becoming a city with no grandchildren, but also one with no aged care workers, police officers, shop assistants or rubbish collectors.

New modelling by Canstar shows the average income needed to buy a median-priced house in some parts of the city is now well in excess of $500,000 a year.

A couple wanting to buy a median-priced home in Sydney’s eastern suburbs will need to each have salaries of $308,000 to afford the repayments. Those looking in the inner west will need two salaries of $126,000 and a median-priced house in the city’s north-western suburbs and Hills District – a landing place for families priced out of other parts of Sydney in the 1990s and early 2000s – would now require two incomes of $149,000 to pay off a home loan with a 20 per cent deposit.

Obviously, the situation is worse for singles or families living on one income. Even for median-price units, only those in the city’s south-west and outer west are within financial reach of someone making just under $100,000 a year.

It explains why young families are flocking to the Central Coast, where a couple with incomes of $80,000 each can afford a median-price house in an area not too far from the water. But who does that leave in Sydney?

Earlier this year, The Sydney Morning Herald published its Do You Earn Enough? series. The series looked at how much Sydneysiders earned, and where they lived, using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

According to the ABS, there are 41 jobs with a median annual salary of $182,000 or more a year. Most are medical specialists of some kind. Barristers, judges and magistrates are all on the list, as are members of parliament and stockbrokers.

Separate tax data shows the city’s highest income earners are ear, nose and throat specialists, who have a median salary of $526,759. It’s an incredibly large sum, but according to today’s story, even these doctors would struggle to afford a median house in Sydney’s east without a second income.

So it is no surprise the series found dozens of inner Sydney suburbs are now completely devoid of emergency workers. There are 33 suburbs on the north shore, in the eastern suburbs and in the inner west with no residents who work as police officers, firefighters or paramedics.

The Sydney of the future will need these essential workers, but also those who are much more lowly paid for their critical jobs: aged care staff and nurses, rubbish collectors and customer service assistants.

The state government’s plans for transport-oriented housing are a good start, but major reform is needed to keep people in these jobs from moving elsewhere.

Alarm bells are ringing. Sydneysiders’ ageing ear canals will be well taken care of. But will we have been listening?