The
recent Rental Affordability Snapshot from Anglicare highlights the dire housing
situation faced by thousands of Tasmanians and shows things are only getting
worse.
Successive
Liberal Governments have failed to prioritise housing for more than eight years
and now all the Rockliff-Ferguson Government is doing is scrambling to play
catch up.
The
Anglicare report clearly shows what Tasmanians already know and are facing
every day – Tasmania has the least affordable housing market in the country and
that trend does not look like changing.
The
report shows that there are only 365 private rental properties available in the
whole of Tasmania. For a family of four with two working parents, barely 100 of
them are considered affordable and half of those are in rural areas.
The
situation is even worse for people surviving on the Disability Support Pension,
with just two affordable private rental homes across the whole state, both of
them in the North-West.
The
Liberal Government has been in power for eight long years and each year there
are more and more Tasmanians suffering as a result of this unprecedented
housing crisis.
This
government must stop ignoring the very serious housing crisis being felt at every
level of the housing system. They must start looking seriously at more
alternatives to provide affordable housing to Tasmanians. For example, short
stay accommodation is estimated to take up around 335 homes in Hobart alone.
That is almost the same number of houses available for rent in all of Tasmania.
There needs to be better regulation of the short-stay and student accommodation
in our cities and Labor will continue to call on a pause on any new ‘whole
dwelling’ short stay permits state-wide.
The Rockliff-Ferguson Government is continuing to fail Tasmanians who are desperate for housing. Their failure to deliver on basic needs is hurting more and more Tasmanians every day.
Ella Haddad MP
Shadow Minister for Housing
