Maryann Wulff

W(h)ither Low Cost Private Rental Housing

Abstract This paper uses census data for 1986 and 1996 to estimate the shortage of low cost private rental stock in Australia. During this period there was a 34 per cent increase in the number of households in private rental, with a disproportionate growth in households with either low or high incomes. At the same time, however, the private rental stock affordable for these households declined significantly. This combination of increased need and decreased supply has resulted in an overall shortage of low cost stock. This shortage is exacerbated by a ‘misallocation’ of existing low cost stock, arising from its use by high income households.

Market Provision of Affordable Rental Housing: Lessons from Recent Trends in Australia

This article provides new evidence on the supply of private rental dwellings affordable for low income households in Australia in 1996 and 2001 and on shortages or surpluses of affordable dwellings in each period. The results indicate a decline in the supply of low rent dwellings between 1996 and 2001 and a resultant shortage of dwellings affordable for low income households in 2001. However, the size of the low rent supply is only the first affordability hurdle for low income households because much of the low rent stock was occupied by higher income households. Employed higher income young families compete with low income older single persons for access to the low rent stock. Once stock utilisation is taken into account, the shortage of dwellings affordable and available for low income households is increased. Moreover, an apparent surplus of dwellings affordable for low to moderate income households is converted to a significant shortage. The article concludes by raising concerns about the shift to policies that rely on the private rental market to provide affordable rental housing.

Growth and change in one person households: Implications for the housing market

Abstract As a result of several demographic and social trends, the one person household accounts for approximately one quarter of all households in Australia and is expected to further expand to one‐third by 2021. After couple families, the single person living alone is the most numerous household form. The paper differentiates one person households by life course stage and considers their likely housing demand in terms of tenure, dwelling type and number of bedrooms. Original analysis of the 1996 ABS 1% Household Sample File has been undertaken. Home ownership increased over the life course for singles, but not to the same extent as for other households. Moreover, there is some evidence to suggest that, household income aside, people living alone may prefer flats, units or apartments over detached houses. The paper suggests that our understanding of housing careers needs to incorporate the possibility of one or more spells as a one person household.

An Overview of Australian Housing and Locational Preference Studies: Choices & Constraints on the Housing Market

This paper is a summary of previous research into the question of housing preferences, particularly the preference for home ownership and detached dwellings. It also covers studies that have investigated the meaning of home ownership to families and strategies that families adopt to meet their preferences in the face of rising housing costs. A number of studies that have looked specifically at medium-density housing preferences are also described. The paper does not present new analyses, but is designed more to assist researchers and others undertaking work in this area.

The implications of child support for housing after relationship dissolution

Abstract In this article we investigate the associations between the payment and receipt of child support and housing circumstances of both resident and non-resident parents. We do so by analysing data from Wave 4 of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. The final analytic sample comprised 1,043 separated parents (637 resident parents, 406 non-resident parents). Our findings indicate that for resident parents the receipt of child support payments above

Private Renter Households: Who Are The Long-Term Renters?

75 per week was significantly associated with better housing circumstances. By contrast, the payment of child support was not significantly related to housing outcomes for non-resident parents. Overall, our results suggest that resident parents in receipt of child support, particularly above the median amount, live with their children in better housing circumstances than resident parents receiving little or no child support. While this finding makes intuitive sense – money matters – the way in which child support appears to be differentially related to the housing circumstances of resident and non-resident parents warrants further investigation.

Suburban socio-spatial polarisation and house price change in Melbourne: 1986 – 1996

Despite the perception that Australias private rental market serves principally as a short-term transitional housing tenure, 40 per cent of households in this sector have rented for longer than ten years. This paper enlarges the housing career concept by proposing two types of long-term private renters: continuals (always rented since leaving the parental home) and returners (rented, purchased home, rented again). By using the multivariate statistical technique, CHAID, the analysis demonstrates that continuals and returners form ten distinct renter segments, defined largely by differences in age, marital status, source of income and household income. In the main, continual segments feature renters in the 30–44 year age group, not yet married or, if married (or formerly married), reliant on social security payments. In contrast, most returners earn private incomes, and tend to be older than the continuals (generally over 45 years). The segment most strongly associated with returning to rental housing exhi...

Immigrants and Housing Demand: International Experiences from Canada, Ireland, Hong Kong, Australia and the USA

This study examines the process and pattern of spatial polarisation in Melbourne Australia between 1986 and 1996. We construct a five-category polarisation typology based on the relative change in the bottom and top ends of local suburban household income distributions. The suburbs are classified as either: increasing advantage, increasing middle income, stable, polarising or increasing disadvantage. The research then examines the relationship between the suburb classification and house prices over the same period. The spatial units are 327 Melbourne suburbs. The two primary data sources include Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) household income figures and Victorian state government house sale price data for 1986 and 1996. The maps reveal a contiguous sector of increasing advantage in Melbourne’s inner and nearby eastern suburbs encircled by an adjacent middle suburban ring characterised by growing disadvantage. Spatially this picture of polarisation corresponds closely with the map showing median house price change between 1986 and 1996. The polarisation categories are closely related to real quartile house prices with the highest house price increases in suburbs of increasing advantage and the lowest gains (or declines) in suburbs increasing in disadvantage.

Australia's housing choices: Retrospect and prospect

The articles presented in this Special Issue grew out of an international collaboration sponsored by the Monash University Institute for the Study of Global Movements. International contributors were invited to prepare articles that broadly discussed the interconnections between globalisation, international migration trends and housing market outcomes in their home nation. Leading academics from Australia, Canada, UK, Hong Kong and Ireland convened at a 2-day workshop in September 2004 at the Institute for Commonwealth Studies in London. This Special Issue of Urban Policy and Research represents the end product of this collaborative process. Together these articles reveal the complex set of processes at work between global forces, national immigration policies and local housing market circumstances. During our London workshop, it soon became clear that ‘globalisation’ and ‘global cities’ were highly contested terms (for a brief overview of the debates see Forrest et al., 2004) and that an over-emphasis on globalisation as an organising conceptual framework would obscure the stories about immigrants and housing markets occurring in diverse places. Instead, we agreed that globalisation has opened up international boundaries and “led to a rapid increase in the flows of people across national borders and the infusion of international migrants into previously local, regional and national labour markets” (Badcock, 2004, p. 60). Migrant arrivals are more diverse than previously and range from the wealthy and skilled to the poor and marginalised. We focus in the main on permanent migrants, but recognise the growing importance of temporary migrants in contemporary immigration flows (Hugo, 2003). Temporary migrants include, among others, skilled workers, international students and working holidaymakers. Despite this diversity, all migrants arrive with the same requirement— the need to be housed. This research effort, then, predominantly attempts to unravel the links between immigration and the housing market in particular places, in itself an enormously complex task.

Did the houses save the world? International perspectives

Demographic, lifestyle, economic and policy changes have all shaped and reshaped housing markets. They have had profound effects on the housing choices open to households and on the constraints households face in framing and achieving their aspirations. One of these long-held aspirations has been home ownership, with Australia enjoying one of the highest rates in the world. Much of this can be attributed to a rapidly increasing standard of living, to high rates of population growth in the immediate postwar period, and to postwar policies that facilitated access to ownership for first home buyers. Social and economic changes in the last few decades have raised questions about the sustainability of home ownership. Household incomes have become increasingly unequal and there is a perception they have become less certain. Both factors impinge upon the capacity of households to access home ownership. Significant economic and labour market restructuring has contributed to a questioning of the ethos of home ownership. These developments, along with a switch in government support for housing away from direct involvement to provision of rent assistance for low income households, have revitalised interest in the role of the private rental market, in particular, its low rent end. The papers in this special housing issue of Urban Policy and Research reflect the culmination of a three year collaborative project on the housing choices made by Australian households as a result of the changing opportunities and constraints arising from this period of unprecedented social and economic change. The project, which was funded by the Australian Research Council and sponsored by the Department of Family and Community Services and the Real Estate Institute of Australia, was specifically concerned with how these changes have affected housing outcomes. Some of the initial results were published in Yates and Wulff (1999). Judith Yates