National Shelter and SGS Economics and Planning have published the Rental Affordability Index (RAI) annually since 2015, marking a significant milestone with this tenth annual release. Over the past decade, the RAI has provided valuable insights into Australia’s rental markets, helping to inform policy decisions and raise awareness about housing affordability.
Unfortunately, the situation has not improved; the housing crisis has deepened, with vulnerable Australians bearing the brunt of these challenges.
The RAI is a price index for housing rental markets. It is a clear and concise indicator of rental affordability relative to household incomes, applied to fine-grain geographic areas across Australia. The report profiles ten different low to moderate income household types to demonstrate the rental situation for different income groups, age demographics and household compositions in Australia.
The report also continues to highlight the poor rental affordability for single people on JobSeeker payments, even during the period during which payments were increased by the COVID-19 supplement. This issue has generally not improved over time, with some capital cities becoming significantly less affordable as rising rents continually outpaced the Jobseeker allowance.
In the ACT, rents remain unaffordable for many low-income Canberrans, despite headline figures based on average incomes suggesting an overall improvement. Based on averages, the ACT appears to be the most affordable juristiction – however this driven primarily by high and increasing average incomes. For low-income earners, students and those on income support payments, the ACT is one of the most unaffordable rental markets.
This year’s index found people receiving JobSeeker face critically unaffordable rents in the ACT. A hospitality worker would need to spend around 40 per cent of their income on rent, while a minimum wage couple faces a rent burden of 31 per cent of combined income – placing both households in rental stress.
Every suburb in the ACT is Unaffordable to Severely Unaffordable for the student sharehouse household type. For pensioners, both singles and couples, the entire territory is Severely to Extremely Unaffordable, despite the improvement in rental affordability seen over the last year.
To access the interactive maps and download the report go to the SGS website.
