It's been a grim start to the year for Australians in housing stress. Already we've had news that thousands of affordable rentals will be wiped from the market, that rents are surging, and that our population is growing much faster than the rate we're building social housing.
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This news is playing into a housing market that has never been less affordable or more volatile. Australians are spending record amounts on housing, and more and more people are being plunged into housing stress.
Anglicare Australia agencies have been working on the front line of this crisis.
We have heard about pensioners competing for rooms in share houses, people in full-time work on the brink of homelessness, and young people with disabilities stuck in aged care because they can't find a home.
Our members tell us about families living in tents and cars, and of their own workers struggling to find homes for themselves and their families.
These stories are borne out by hard statistics. We have been tracking this crisis each year with our annual Rental Affordability Snapshot, which shows just how dire the crisis has become.
Each year journalists ask us why, when this crisis has engulfed so many people, haven't we seen real action?
The truth is that there has been action - the wrong kind.
The past three decades have marked a shift in how the federal government tackles housing. It used to fund social homes as its answer to housing affordability.
This provided secure homes for people on low incomes, and freed up affordable rentals for people on middle incomes.
This changed in the 1990s, when the government began relying on the private market to do the heavy lifting. It offered people grants and payments instead of providing affordable homes itself.
Anyone can see that this approach is failing. The shortage of affordable rentals has been soaring since 1996 - even though every region in Australia has an oversupply of homes.
Supply continues to be the solution favoured by the developer lobby and many politicians.
Yet Australia already builds anywhere between 165,000 and 240,000 new homes each year, growing faster than our population. Yet even though supply is growing, it is not making housing more affordable.
It is social housing that hasn't kept pace with our population. We have a shortfall of 500,000 social homes across the country, and that number is only growing.
Australia's undersupply is not in housing, but in affordable housing.
Private rentals do not trickle down and become more affordable, but social housing has benefits that trickle up to all Australians. It helps people in need, in frees up cheap rentals for everyone else, and building it helps communities recover after disasters like floods and fires.
Our own Prime Minister grew up in social housing, and has said that he would not be where he is today without it.
All of this sounds like a no-brainer, but building social homes costs money. Ending our shortfall would mean building 25,000 homes each year for the next two decades.
Even maintaining our current share of social housing would mean building 15,000 new homes a year. Our current rate is about 3,000 - nowhere near what is needed to end the crisis, or even stop it from getting worse.
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Before Christmas, the Albanese government released a plan to fund 20,000 social homes over five years. That's a start, it recognises that social housing is important and that we need national leadership.
But it's a fraction of Australia's shortfall. The problem with this plan is that it's cost-neutral, funded from investments that don't affect the budget's bottom line.
A crisis that has been brewing for decades simply won't be solved without spending money.
We have the money to turn this around, but as always, it's a question of priorities.
Last year, modelling from Anglicare Australia showed that we could end the social housing shortfall for much less than the cost of the planned stage three tax cuts.
If we can afford to spend $250 billion on tax cuts for people who don't even want them, we can surely afford to make sure everyone has a home.
Of course, the current government didn't create this crisis. They inherited it. But that doesn't change the fact that years of government decisions created this problem. Only government action will fix it.
Tackling this crisis will take time, and a willingness to put the interests of Australians who need a home ahead of other interests - those of developers, investors, and naysayers who won't accept that the current approach is failing and keep calling for more of the same.
Rental stress, insecurity, and homelessness do not have to be the way of the future.
We can and we must invest in affordable homes for everyone, especially people who need them the most, and ensure that everyone has a place to call home.
With homes on the line, the stakes for our housing system couldn't be higher. Australia cannot afford more lost opportunities to tackle this crisis.
As we begin the new year, our hope is that Australia will finally reach a tipping point that spurs the right kind of action.
- Kasy Chambers is the executive director of Anglicare Australia.
