Estimates - Housing and Planning - Rental Affordability Snapshot
Ms BURNET - Minister, I want to go back to that Anglicare snapshot - the rental affordability snapshot - it's pretty sobering reading. From the report, it says:
Rent growth is outstripping incomes for the first time in the 20-year history of the Rental Affordability Snapshot. Median rent on a room in a share house is now unaffordable for low-income, single households, including those on the minimum wage. The lack of affordable rental properties is continuing to drive up demand for social housing and force Tasmanians into homelessness.
Of the 770 properties listed, which was down 9 per cent in that 12 months, less than half the number of properties that were available 10 years ago, and there were zero properties affordable for solo-parent families receiving Single Parenting Payment or JobSeeker, young Tasmanians receiving Youth Allowance, single Tasmanians receiving JobSeeker and Tasmanians receiving disability support pension. What, minister, are you doing in your capacity to come up with solutions out of this dire situation that so may people find themselves in?
Mr VINCENT - Yes, it is very difficult and it's hard to adjust. It's very sobering and we've already touched on it earlier in the evening, about the fact that more and more economic pressures are going to come to bear. We have committed to expanding, in the same way that the federal government and all other states have, the supply of social and affordable homes with multi-year construction programs now. It's just very simple: we have to build more places. Unfortunately, we don't see the - it's a different sort of lifestyle now for a lot of young people, and concentration is not on building their own place. A lot can't afford to. Some can. There's more pressure on retired people and parents now that can't afford to always help their children into a place. It's very much a changing dynamic. It really comes back to if all of us, as parents or investors in the community, can't take up the gap, the only place to go is the federal and state governments. So we have to commit to ongoing programs of acceleration of building all these different styles and types of homes.
We've done an enormous amount of work over the last few months in talking to upgrading builders, as I touched on before. But also to building firms about increasing the type of build and the - not mod homes, but modular building systems, so we can do it quicker with greater numbers in the appropriate areas. That does take some money to set up and finance an operation like that, but there are people in the state that are moving very quickly to do that. So, the acceleration of homes is where we're concentrating on to maintain a sensible price so the government can afford to keep replicating this year-on-year spend that's needed.
But you just can't build homes. The average time of building a home now has changed from - on a conventional home, it's gone from six months to nine months over the last 10 years. I'm not sure why or the reason for that. I don't fully understand that nine-month blowout. And we know the cost since 2014 has increased by 88 per cent. They are just some of the factors affecting it, whether you're a mum-and-dad investor or whether you're a government person in the cost of the homes.
One of the big things that I am proud of is the movement between the negotiations of Homes Tas and several building firms into working in partnership to figure out how we can build more homes at are more affordable rate.
Ms BURNET - In the situation where I've got a spare room, I've had somebody who's working at Dark Mofo staying with me. He's from Amsterdam. His parents have been living in social housing. It's amazing, on Instagram if anybody wants to see it. And he will be guaranteed a house when he gets back in a few years' time. He will be guaranteed a house, which is not something that we can we can say in Tasmania. So, I implore you, minister, to do what you can in the time that you have in your role.
Mr VINCENT - I guarantee you that I am.
Ms BURNET - I know, but this is a dire situation for far too many young Tasmanians. And older Tasmanians too.