Monday, September 21, 2009

Public housing rent increases


We've noted here a couple of times that the recession has knocked off rent increases this year. For some public housing tenants, however, rents are going up – by a lot.



(Senior Client Service Officer, Vlad Tepes)

The tenants affected are those who are on one of Housing NSW's concessional rent rebate rates. (For Brown Couch readers who are not up on public housing rents: most public housing tenants pay rents that are rebated to 25 per cent of their household income, but there are some types of tenants, some types of household members, and some types of income to which lower 'concessional' rates apply.) These persons are:

  • pensioners on the 18 per cent rate. Their rent rebate rate will increase to 19 per cent this October, and a further one per cent each year thereafter, until they're on the 25 per cent rate.
  • 18-20 year-old household members on the 12.5 per cent rate. Their rate will increase to 13.75 per cent this October, and increase again to 15 per cent next year.
  • 21-24 year-old household members on the 20 per cent rate. Their rate will increase to 22.5 per cent this October, and increase again to 25 per cent next year.
Now, Housing NSW will say that these are increases of only one, 1.25 and 2.5 per cent. But that's if you measure rent increases relative to income, which no-one really ever does. Most people measure rent increases relative to what the rent used to be, so here's what these rent increases really look like:

  • 18 per cent pensioners: up 5.6 per cent this year
  • 18-20 year olds: up 10 per cent this year
  • 21-24 year olds: up 12.5 per cent this year.
Ouch.

To anticipate another objection: even after the increases, these people will still be paying afforable rents. Actually, I wonder about the 'affordability' of the 25 per cent rate. I don't think there's any great science behind it, and there's been other benchmarks. Until a few years ago, public housing's general rate was 20 per cent, and another, older rule of thumb was that a workingman's rent should be no more than one-sixth of his income. Research by Prof Terry Burke suggests that the 25 per cent benchmark of affordability is, for some low-income households, too high.

It's not good enough for Housing NSW to justify these steep rent increases by saying well, that's what we're getting out of the rest of our tenants. Housing NSW should instead go back and look at the budgets of its clientele and see if they really can afford these rents.

2 comments:

  1. There will be a further jump in rents for some social housing tenants in twelve months. The NSW Government has decided to quarantine Kevin Rudd's one-off pension increase from rent assessment for 12 months. The amount for single age and disability pensioners is $30 per week. This means in twelve months' time they will receive a rent increase of $7.50 per week. So much for the increase in pension being a catch-up when the landlord decides to take a slice!

    ReplyDelete
  2. You're right, Mire. HNSW is basically saying to pensioners, 'I see you've got a few more dollars in your pocket this year - don't worry, we're not going to count them when we work out your rent... but we are going to take a few more of those others dollars you already had.'

    ReplyDelete

Please keep your comments PC - that is, polite and civilised. Comments may be removed at the discretion of the blog administrator; no correspondence will be entered into. Comments that are abusive of individual persons, or are sexist, racist or otherwise offensive will be removed, so don’t bother leaving them.

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.