Anglicare have released its latest Rental Affordability Snapshot, and the rental market is the worst its ever been.

As Max Chandler-Mather and the Greens point out, the Snapshot surveyed 51,238 rental listings across Australia and found that:

• 352 rentals (0.7%) were affordable for a person earning a full-time minimum wage
• 165 rentals (0.3%) were affordable for a person on the Age Pension
• 28 rentals (0.1%) were affordable for a person on the Disability Support Pension
• 3 rentals (0%), all rooms in sharehouses, were affordable for a person on JobSeeker
• No rentals were affordable for a person on Youth Allowance.

While Labor and the Liberals housing proposals have been widely panned by economists as even further driving up demand and prices, the Greens have made real action on the housing crisis a top issue in the election.

Under both Labor and the Coalition, property investors will receive $180 billion over the next decade in the form of negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount, which for decades have driven up house prices and locked first home buyers out of the market.

The Greens have urgently called for action to stop the housing crisis getting worse, including grandfathering negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount handouts to one property only, capping rent increases and a massive investment in genuinely affordable housing through the creation of a government property developer. 

The Greens have identified action on negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount as a priority in the next Parliament, including in minority government.

The Greens have also proposed introducing caps on rent increases, and using the money saved from changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount to fund a public property developer, which would build 610,000 homes over the next decade, to be rent and sold at capped prices.