Opinion: Anglican Church fails to walk the walk on housing crisis

The debate over the housing market is nothing new but there is one big myth that needs to be debunked.

Anglicare’s latest report joins the pile-on against property investors.

The Anglican Church, under its Anglicare arm, has released the fourth report in its Australia Fair series. It’s called Widening the Gap and it draws further attention to our patchwork-quilt tax system.

It makes a few valid points about the very rich getting richer and suggests winding back generous trust and superannuation tax breaks – but there are glaring issues that deserve a response.

Firstly, please stop demonising landlords. I can understand it from the Greens and other political thinktanks, hell-bent on squeezing the life and soul out of every small-time property investor – but from the church? Please, no.

Remember when there used to be very firm rules about the separation of church from state? Not any more. Now “the church” is telling “the government” what’s wrong with the tax system and how to fix it.

The Anglican Church’s report is full of heavy language like “denied”, “fuelled” and “exacerbated”, drawing exclusively on similar opinions from left-leaning groups like ACOSS and the Australia Institute. By comparison, and against the interests of fairness, there are no quotes or references from any property industry reports, or any statistics about the more than 2.2 million ordinary Australians who own an investment property according to the ATO. You won’t read it in the Anglicare report, but around 72 per cent of those investors only own one rental property, and close to 20 per cent own two.

Which brings me to my second point: there’s a glaring difference between the Anglican Church and its new lobby group friends, and it comes down to “the housing crisis”.

In my suburb of Toowong in inner western Brisbane, the Anglican Church has been land-banking and mothballing family homes since 1988.

That’s right; when I was a high school kid marvelling at World Expo, the Anglican diocese was buying up residential-A-zoned properties next to one of its Anglicare aged-care facilities.

Fast-forward an astounding 36 years, and the church has done nothing with those homes – zippo, nix, nada – other than let them decay to the point where, for public safety reasons, they erected a fence around them.

That’s two perfectly good suburban family homes that were removed from use by the Anglican Church in 1988, and they are still sitting vacant right now.

Brisbane journalist Melanie Stott

Imagine the number of families who could have lived there – how many of the Anglicare report’s “people on the lowest incomes” were “denied economic security in the longer term” when they could have just been handed the keys to one of the Anglican Church’s vacant houses in Toowong?

Anglicare Southern Queensland released a statement by CEO Sue Cooke saying it “…is currently considering our growth strategy for residential aged care and housing and homelessness services… and the ability to use the abovementioned neighbouring land in future opportunities”.

It’s not just land – it’s land with two homes on it, sitting vacant when people are homeless. A sad blight on the local landscape, those homes are a symbol of the greed of our churches and their failure to “read the room”. In a housing crisis, they continue to land-bank just like any other developer; except they’re a church actively lecturing government on how to fix wealth inequities.

Of course, it’s not just the Anglican Church at blame here. All the churches own thousands of homes throughout Australia – some rented, many used as commercial workplaces – but there are no questions asked when homes are purchased and forever lost as family homes.

I’m one of the millions of investors that the Anglicare report described as “wealthy individuals”. Um, no – we’re just trying to raise and support healthy kids, be comfortable in retirement and not have to claim a pension. Anglicare’s suggested reforms will make that harder, and for many, push any hope of financial security in retirement out of reach.

Tax breaks for property investors are justified because landlords are providing a much-needed service and investing in their own financial futures. Why would a government wind back policies that encourage the financial independence of millions of Aussies?

The reality is, Australia needs private landlords to provide the housing that governments can’t. Who would want governments to be solely in charge of the rental market? Be careful what you wish for.

The Widening the Gap report hits the nail on the head; “when wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few, it limits opportunities for people from less wealthy backgrounds… (and) erodes trust in institutions”.

That’s exactly how I feel about the Anglican Church with its mothballed homes in my suburb, and all the other land and property-banking churches buying up homes to use as offices – while preaching tax policy crackdowns to make life harder for investors.

Can there be an audit of vacant homes in Australia owned by churches? Perhaps Anglicare’s next Australia Fair report should take a good, long look at financial and property-related hypocrisy within the church sector as a whole? Now that would be an interesting read.

Melanie Stott is a Brisbane journalist