Anglicare’s Rental Affordability Snapshot: Essential Workers Edition, released today, shows just how unaffordable rentals are for essential workers in Tasmania, and why we desperately need the Rockliff Government to deliver better protections for renters and more investment in building public housing.
Of approximately 700 properties surveyed in Tasmania, Anglicare found just 18 that were affordable for workers in areas like teaching, ambulance services, nursing, and construction – including none at all in the south-east region. This shocking lack of affordable rentals is driving more and more people into poverty and hardship and making it even harder to recruit and retain staff in critical areas like health and education.
Anglicare spells out how the rental crisis is the “product of deliberate policy choices” that are ” shutting out the very people our communities depend on” from affordable housing. This has to change. Housing is a human right, and governments need to start putting people first.
This report doesn’t just point out the problem, it also details what needs to be done to make rentals affordable. For the Tasmanian government, top of the list is better protections for renters and more funding to build public housing.
Tens of thousands of Tasmanians are struggling to pay their rent and dealing with unacceptable living conditions, and this won’t change without proper legal protections for tenants. While it’s good news the state’s rental laws are now under review, Anglicare also highlights why a proactive approach to upholding the law is needed – rather than leaving renters to fend for themselves. This is something I hear from renters all the time, and exactly why the Greens are pushing for a taskforce to be set up to crackdown on rental breaches.
To make sure housing is affordable for everyone in Tasmania now and into the future, we need the government to make public housing a top budget priority. The Liberals like to pretend they are doing this by making hollow announcements and fudging the stats, but to make a real difference we need to see much more money go to building homes. This is so much more important than funding a costly new stadium we don’t need.
