Greens push to double rent assistance for welfare recipients in housing fund deal

The Greens are pushing for a doubling of rent assistance for people on welfare as the Government seeks the minor party’s support to pass the $10 billion housing fund.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher says the Government is considering some increase to rental assistance payments as it looks to offer more cost-of-living relief in the coming Budget.

Two expert panels last week told the Government the $157 fortnightly payment had to be boosted to better support the nation’s poorest people.

The women’s economic equality taskforce said the move would “improve women’s immediate housing security stemming from the lack of affordable, appropriate, and safe housing options”, while the economic inclusion advisory committee said the payment had failed to keep up with actual increases in rents.

Over the past two decades, the payment has dropped from covering about half of an average low-income renter’s costs to just a third, the committee said.

About two-thirds of Youth Allowance recipients and three-quarters of JobSeeker recipients are in housing stress, defined as spending more than 30 per cent of their incoming on housing.

Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather said while increasing the rate of JobSeeker – also recommended by the two expert groups – was an immediate priority, lifting the rental assistance would also offer people relief with rising costs straight away.

The party wants the Government to double the payment, including the demand in the four points it wants movement on in exchange for passing the stalled $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund.

“Doubling the rate of Commonwealth Rent Assistance would give immediate relief to 1.5 million renter households at a fraction of the cost of the Stage 3 tax cuts or nuclear submarines,” Mr Chandler-Mather told The West.

“With families sleeping in their cars and people one rent increase away from eviction, it’s beyond comprehension why Labor can’t commit to doubling the rate of Commonwealth Rent Assistance and lifting millions of renters out of housing stress.”

Doubling the rate would cost the budget about $3.5 billion a year, a Parliamentary Budget Office analysis for the Greens found. Lifting it by half would cost about $2.1 billion a year.

Senator Gallagher, who is also Minister for Women, acknowledged that providing secure housing particularly for women over 55, the cohort most at risk of homelessness, was a real challenge.

“In general, we are serious about looking at what we can do around housing,” she told ABC’s Insiders on Sunday.

“We are looking at those (recommendations) through the ERC process; (we) haven’t concluded the review and people will see the results of that on Budget night.”

Commonwealth rental assistance is available for people on a range of welfare payments, including JobSeeker, Youth Allowance and the age pension, who are paying at least $140 a fortnight in rent. The maximum payment of $157 a fortnight is offered to people paying at least $350 a fortnight in rent.

The rental vacancy rate in Perth is about 0.7 per cent, with median rents sitting about $1100 a fortnight for houses and $920 for units, according to the Real Estate Institute of WA.

In WA, there were about 131,100 people receiving the rental support payment in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available.

A third of them were JobSeeker recipients while a further 20 per cent were on the age pension.