Rental prices in Canberra are increasing more than any other Australian capital city, and there is no sign they will stabilise or come down anytime soon.
The rising cost severely impacts the most vulnerable in our community, with Anglicare calling Canberra’s rental crisis “catastrophic” in their annual national Rental Affordability Snapshot. Confronting CoreLogic data from the March 2022 quarter revealed Canberra remains the most expensive capital city to rent, with the median weekly rent hitting $674.
Echoing calls for rental reform from like-minded Canberra organisations, community advocacy group for affordable and high-quality housing, Greater Canberra, has released its 2022-2023 ACT Budget Consultation Submission.
The group proposed key recommendations to reduce rental costs, and outlined the impacts on the wider ACT economy.
Data included in the submission reveals Canberra’s rents increased steadily at an average rate of around 2.8 per cent per year over the past five years to March 2022. Comparatively, annual CPI growth sits around 2.6 per cent.
This has caused Canberra’s rents to skyrocket by a total of 15 per cent over the past five years, whereas Sydney saw just a three per cent increase, while Melbourne experienced a two per cent decrease.
This significant rental increase has led to a drop in interstate migration, which Greater Canberra said is hurting the ACT economy.
The submission stated: “Principally, this analysis indicates that high housing costs are creating a barrier for employers seeking to bring talent to the ACT, which has negative impacts for both business operating costs and worker productivity.”
Additionally, the submission shows that, more broadly, current high housing costs in the ACT have increased the cost of living and lowered real incomes for Canberra families.
Greater Canberra convenor, Howard Maclean, said, “Canberrans pride ourselves on being a community where people of all backgrounds can find economic opportunities”.
“But our current exclusionary planning laws and high rents mean those opportunities are increasingly out of reach, as many Canberrans are pushed into poverty. We need a planning system that creates more housing options for all Canberrans, young or old.”
Mr Maclean said that considering rent payments make up a large part of the household budget for low-income and young families, rent increases have significantly reduced discretionary incomes. This has resulted in employers finding it difficult to attract new talent to the ACT.
The research also suggests Australians potentially forgo moving to the ACT altogether due to the high cost of living and rental prices being the most expensive in the country.
“Our broken housing market is hurting residents and turning new arrivals away from the ACT. That means fewer people able to rejoin family in Canberra, fewer talented employees for ACT businesses, and fewer people able to take advantage of our abundant renewable energy,” he said.
Greater Canberra recommended that the new ACT Planning Bill have a core focus of creating affordable housing, and enable more medium-density housing to be built to house the ‘missing middle’. Greater Canberra’s full 2022-2023 ACT Budget Consultation Submission is available to view at www.greatercanberra.org
