CANBERRA, Nov. 29 (Xinhua) -- Australia is currently in the midst of a rental affordability crisis, according to a report handed down on Wednesday which analyzed how much of an average household's weekly income was spent on rent.
The Rental Affordability Index (RAI) is a biannual report published by community groups SGS Economics and Planning, National Shelter and Community Sector Banking, and it monitors the proportion of Australian suburbs which are deemed anywhere from "unaffordable" to "acceptable".
According to the RAI, an unaffordable rental market is one in which housing costs exceed 30 percent of a low-income household's gross income. A low-income household is that deemed to be in the lowest 40 percent of income earners.
According to Adrian Pisarski from National Shelter, one of the organizations which published the RAI, there is "virtually no affordable housing in any Australian city" for low income earners.
Speaking to Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio on Wednesday, he said the overall average percentage of income spent on rent was 29 percent in Sydney, 28 percent in Hobart and 25 percent in Melbourne, but low income earners were worse off.
According to the statistics, 47.1 percent of low income-earning households were spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent in greater metropolitan areas.
"This is now representative of a true housing crisis in Australia and a true market failure," he said.
Sydney remains the least affordable city, followed by the Tasmanian capital, Hobart, and beach holiday destinations such as Noosa Heads in Queensland.
"Those (holiday) areas used to be relatively cheap places to rent. This just isn't the case anymore," Pisarski said.
Pisarski said the flow-on effects from "rental stress", as it's known, could include a sharp rise in the number of homeless Australians.
"All of the reports that we get from homeless services is that they are under increased stress," he said on Wednesday.
"We also know there are many reports of older Australians, women in particular, suffering from homelessness."
Pisarski said that government needed to have the "right incentives" in place to make legislation changes to keep rental properties affordable.
