Call for rent freeze amid crisis

Renters would have saved a ­collective $10.7bn if rental payments had been frozen nationwide for the past year, analysis shows.

Renters would have saved a ­collective $10.7bn if rental payments had been frozen nationwide for the past 12 months, analysis by the Parliamentary ­Library has found.

The figures, seen by the Australian, showed the average renter was paying $4896 more for their home than last year after rents rose across the nation by about 21.5 per cent over the past 12 months.

The analysis, commissioned by the Greens in November, focused on how much rent would have been saved by private renters in Australia if a rent freeze had been in place over the past year, and broke down how much better off tenants would have been in each capital city.

Rent rises were most acute in NSW, where they increased by almost 29 per cent. Had a rent freeze been in place, tenants could have been more than $7400 better off over the past 12 months. The analysis showed Victorian renters would have been $5200 better off under the freeze and Queensland renters more than $5100 better off.

The Greens want a two-year rent freeze on the agenda for Wednesday’s national cabinet.

Greens spokesman for Housing and Homelessness Max Chandler-Mather said the need for intervention would become more acute into 2023, as cost of living continues to rise and electricity prices are expected to increase by more than 50 per cent.

“If the Prime Minister doesn’t put a national rent freeze and an end to no-grounds evictions on the table at the national cabinet meeting this week, then this will be a spectacular failure of leadership in the middle of the worst rental crisis in our recent history,” Mr Chandler-Mather said.

“The federal budget has projected that over the next two years real wages will continue to decline while rents skyrocket and let’s be real, that will see Australia lurch into a major social crisis, unless Labor finally shows some leadership and freezes rents.”

Mr Chandler-Mather pointed to rent freezes being used during the pandemic in states such as Victoria, and said such measures were now needed again.

Figures from the UNSW City Futures Research Centre last month showed more than 640,000 families were homeless, living in overcrowded homes or spending more than 30 per cent of their income on rent or mortgage repayments.

Community Housing Industry Association chief executive Wendy Hayhurst said at the time that it was “harder to think of a higher priority than giving all Australians a stable and secure home”. “The commonwealth has laid important foundations for expanding social and affordable housing and it is reassuring to see them seriously grapple with this challenge (but) we will need to muster additional investment from all levels of government and superannuation funds to meet this challenge,” she said.