Australia's 10 million spare bedrooms

This morning The Guardian published an article using recent data released from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. It was a good piece, but it had a somewhat misleading headline. The Brown Couch's founder had this to say:

Badly misleading headline (on a decent article). Social housing vacancy rate is actually 3 per cent. https://t.co/01sVqLDDH7

— Chris Martin (@dr_chris_martin) July 20, 2017

If the vacancy rate in public housing is only 3% what was the headline trying to say? They were measuring the use of bedrooms in public housing and noting that one in six bedrooms is "under-utilised."

As it happens, this year the Census data introduced a specific measure of "Housing Suitability" which measures whether a household has spare bedrooms, or needs extra. Let's take a look at the state of bedroom use.

Not the typical use of a bed

The data shows about 75% of our spare bedrooms are in owner occupied housing. It isn't just that a majority of Australian homes are owner-occupied - 87% of homes owned outright have at least one spare bedroom, and almost 60% have two or more. Mortgaged homes are slightly better, as only 77% of these have a spare bedroom. 41% have two spare rooms or more.

Australia wide, the story is the same. There are more than 10 million spare bedrooms in Australia. Around two thirds of our mortgaged homes have spare rooms, as do 80% of homes that are owned outright.

Social housing looks very different. Not only do less than a third of tenanted social housing properties have a spare room, there are more in this tenure type that are mildly overcrowded. 2 in every 5 social housing dwellings are in need of at least one extra bedroom.


Renters both in the private rental market and social housing are much better at utilising their bedrooms than owner-occupiers. There are different reasons for this - where private renters are pushed to efficiency by price signals and competition (ie you generally only rent as many rooms as you need, unless you're either bonkers or rich), social housing renters are pushed by the allocation strategies of their landlords. Social housing tenants who do have a "spare" bedroom do so because they need it, and are entitled to it under the policies of their provider. For example, households may be given an additional room for a live-in carer, for family members who reside with them part-time, or for cultural reasons.

Of course, the other major reason we hear of social housing tenants ending up with a spare bedroom is that their allocation is not really suited to their needs, or their needs have changed since their allocation  made. You can't really blame a household for so-called "under utilising" if they're occupying the only property that is available to them - our failure to build enough social housing properties throughout the ages means many people have nowhere to downsize to as their needs change.

Despite this, social housing tenants are clearly putting their part of the nation's housing stock to the most efficient use, relative to the rest of the population.

Well done to you all!