This 19-year-old says with hard work, he’ll buy a home in Brighton soon. But for an unpaid performer, the Australian dream is distant

In this series, The Age asks a diverse group of people aged 19 to 29 to reveal what challenges and rewards they face as young Melburnians.See all 5 stories.

Housing is a topic so divisive it can imperil even the most civilised Australian dinner party. So when The Age hosted a dinner for a diverse group of five young Melburnians and asked them about the housing crisis, opinions were split and disagreement was stark.

They agreed on one thing: that affordability – or the lack of it – had created enormous problems for their generation. But how they could respond to the challenge, or even how to feel about it, was up for debate.

Over two hours, five people aged between 19 and 29 – an artist, an actor, a youth worker and two university students who work in construction and financial services – debated and contested the challenges and rewards of being young and living in Melbourne for an Age series. Housing is the issue through which almost all the others are seen.

Perhaps surprisingly, around this table at least, there’s little anger at older generations and politicians who have overseen an era of skyrocketing home prices. But some shots were fired at what our diverse cohort described as land barons – people who own several rental properties – and at the failure of governments to create housing with sufficient access to local services such as public transport.

Figures released by Canstar last year suggest single-income buyers looking to buy a house in Melbourne’s inner suburbs, inner south and inner east would need an annual income north of $200,000 and a 20 per cent deposit to be able to service a home loan.

Despite the steep prices, 19-year-old Liberal Party member Jenson Galvin is optimistic that he’ll be able to buy in his local area of Brighton within a decade.

“It’s harder now [than in the past], so that’s very difficult,” says Galvin, a financial services worker and university student, who also hosts a community radio show. “But through hard work … I’m confident I will, and hopefully it’s soon.”

Home ownership v public housing

In Galvin’s family, home ownership has been a priority. When his grandparents migrated to Australia from Mauritius in the 1950s, they quickly bought a house. His parents married young and built a home soon after.

Undeterred by the steep prices, this Brighton Grammar alum who exudes maturity and confidence can’t see why his experience should be different. (His confidence, he says, comes after “a lot of failure”.)

Galvin believes the outlook for young people in the housing market would be better under Liberal governments. He thinks immigration should be reduced, medium-density buildings prioritised and government spending on infrastructure projects – like the Suburban Rail Loop – cut, to free up money.

Despite his support for medium-density housing, when the state government announced Brighton as a new activity centre where apartments could be fast-tracked and built taller, Galvin took to the streets to protest. The buildings permitted under Labor’s plan were just too high and would put too great a strain on Brighton’s local amenities, he says.

Even so, he will consider buying an apartment when the time comes – he’s spent most of his life living in apartments, and is renting a townhouse.

Across the table, Galvin finds agreement with Abdulmalik*, 27, a construction administrator who insists determination and grit is the key to owning a home. Abdulmalik grew up in a public housing estate in Collingwood and sees the disadvantage of his upbringing “almost like a motivator”.

By his estimation, if you put your head down, set goals and network, there’s a place for you in the private market.

But there are shades of grey.

“It needs to go back to where [housing] was government-owned, built by the government … I’m talking about public tenants,” says Abdulmalik. “I voted for Labor, but the last 13, 14 years now, of the Labor government … I think they established just a lot of waste.”

Though Abdulmalik and Galvin agree on hard work being the bedrock of home ownership, there is much they disagree on. On Galvin’s point about capping immigration, Abdulmalik, the child of African migrants, argues there is enough room in Victoria, especially in outer suburbs and regional towns.

He’s aware of far greater population density in his parents’ birth country than in Melbourne’s suburban sprawl.

“We should be able to bring people in [to Australia]” says Abdulmalik.

Listening to Galvin and Abdulmalik talking, 29-year-old non-binary performer Ryan Stewart feels compelled to speak.

“You guys have been going on about working hard. I work f---ing hard,” they say.

Stewart works two jobs and sinks endless hours into their creative work, but, “I probably make the least amount of money in this room, just because none of my creative labour is paid”.

Stewart was 10 when their parents divorced in 2006, so their family went from a double-income home to two single-income households during the global financial crisis.

“I was exposed to a lot of things like the social service industry and stuff like that quite early … and that … definitely opened up my eyes to the sorts of areas that people with lower incomes have to navigate.”

It makes them prickly to any suggestion that low-income earners who can’t afford to buy their own homes are lazy or rorting the system – a view they believe comes down to privilege. Stewart was also socialised as a male before coming out as non-binary, and was then excommunicated from the church they’d grown up in. This, they say, forced them to accept “a certain degree of a loss of that privilege”.

The evening’s wearing on. The sparkling water’s lost its fizz and the pizza’s getting cold when Galvin, the Liberal member and Bayside resident, comes back to the idea of government ownership of housing, saying it’s the wrong model.

That prompts Mia Boe, a 27-year-old contemporary artist, to speak up. “I think the exact opposite.”

Buying a house is not a priority for Boe, an Indigenous woman with Butchulla and Burmese ancestry, and, like Stewart, she thinks more housing should be “government controlled [and] subsidised”.

With five siblings, she can’t rely on the bank of mum and dad. She views this transfer of intergenerational wealth as a driver of inequality.

Much of Boe’s art touches on issues of disinheritance. She’s taken up artist residences in K’gari and Mexico City, with solo exhibitions across Australia, and painted broadcaster Tony Armstrong for the 2024 Archibald Prize. Boe is generally a Greens voter and believes in putting limits on how many properties people can own.

“[Housing] is seen as a massive commodity and a way to make profits, when it should be seen as a human right, in my opinion.”

What about buses and trains?

At the head of the table, sitting patiently through the debate, is Ikram Mahamed, a 23-year-old public health graduate and youth worker.

She’d like a home of her own, but says building more homes – the policy of both major political parties federally – is only part of addressing the crisis. More homes mean the need for enough public amenities, she says.

Mahamed’s measured tone draws the attention of the room.

“I live in Tarneit and trying to get on an 8.01am train is intense. It’s because it was such a big focus on housing and housing and housing,” says Mahamed. “But it’s like, where are all the trains, where are all the bus routes?”

When she moved from Ascot Vale public housing to the Wyndham area at the end of primary school, the outer west was a scattering of homes among paddocks. She’s seen the explosion of housing in the area while other community essentials lag.

If Mahamed is to buy a house, it will likely take some time. It takes about 10½ years for a median-income household to save a 20 per cent deposit (assuming they save 15 per cent of their income) according to last year’s ANZ CoreLogic Housing Affordability Report.

Mahamed is a strong advocate for the west and says being Somali means it’s important to feel connected to her local community. This prompted her to study public health and shaped her stance on the need for adequate transport, schools and hospitals alongside homes.

It was a point the group widely agreed with.

Common ground was even struck between Tarneit and Brighton, as Galvin argued that 20-storey towers would put too much strain on his suburb’s existing services.

Despite politicians frequently promising and legislating to address the housing crisis, these young Melburnians have little faith it will make any difference for them.

*Surname removed following doubts about being fully identified after the interview was conducted.

• With Gemma Grant, Hannah Kennelly, Brittany Busch and Hannah Hammoud
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