The Greens have today launched a plan to strengthen renters’ rights and fund tenancy advocacy services. Nearly a third of all Australian households rent their home. Yet government after government has ignored renters’ rights in favour of landlord profits.

The Greens have today announced that in balance of power after the next election, they will push a plan to build one million new publicly-owned, affordable, high-quality and sustainable homes.

The Greens’ push for secure housing comes as property prices surge to record highs and a generation has been locked out of home ownership, unable to save enough for a deposit, while they continue to face rising rents.

The Greens have today announced a plan to build 125,000 new homes and sell them to people locked out of housing for $300,000.

Young people locked out of the housing market could decide a number of key inner city elections around the country, including Griffith in Brisbane.

With a tight election looming, a win in Griffith could put the Greens in the balance of power, and push the next government to make housing more affordable.

The Greens are campaigning on the issue of housing affordability, promising to offer good quality $300K homes to first home buyers.

Australian Greens Housing spokesperson Senator Mehreen Faruqi has expressed alarm at the figures released today from the Australian Bureau of Statistics from their Residential Property Price Index. The release shows that there was an overall 6.7% rise in house prices for the June 2021 quarter with Sydney and Canberra experiencing an unprecedented rise of over 8%.

Senator Faruqi said:

Another week marking homelessness is another week marking lack of action by the government to reduce homelessness. People wait for over a decade to access public housing in some parts of Australia, while hundreds of thousands of people seek help from homelessness services each year. The last census showed us that over 100,000 people are without a home on any given night. We are now approaching another census, and homelessness and the housing crisis has just been growing.

Australian Greens Housing spokesperson Senator Mehreen Faruqi has responded to the latest data on median property prices in this week’s Domain House Price Report, with Sydney’s median house price now over $1.4 million and Melbourne over $1.0 million.

Senator Faruqi said:

“Millions of people are being robbed of housing security and housing affordability. This is nothing less than intergenerational theft.

The Greens have labelled it ‘Labor’s great leap rightwards’ as the ALP drops progressive policies like negative gearing and public dental while moving to support the Liberal’s radical right-wing flat tax policy. 

New costings by the independent Parliamentary Budget Office revealed this week show an incredible gender and income bias in the benefit of proposed stage 3 tax cuts (full tables below):

Australian Greens Housing spokesperson Senator Mehreen Faruqi has responded to Labor’s move to dump its commitment to winding back negative gearing.

Senator Faruqi said:

“This is a cowardly and pathetic backflip. House prices and rents are skyrocketing, and Labor is throwing fuel on the fire.

“In the middle of a housing affordability crisis, Labor has caved to wealthy investors and the Liberals. This is a shocking move and a betrayal of young people in particular.

The Greens have welcomed the release today of the Nowhere To Go report by Equity Economics, which finds that a significant build of social housing would support thousands of women and children fleeing family and domestic violence.

The report underscores the urgent need for a massive expansion in public and community housing, which the Greens continue to advocate for.

Senator Mehreen Faruqi, Greens spokesperson for Housing, said:

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

There is a housing crisis in Australia and the Morrison Government is refusing to fix it.

There is a housing crisis in Australia and the Morrison government is refusing to fix it. In fact, there is a very deliberate strategy by the coalition to appear to be doing something about the housing crisis, while ignoring the very policy settings that have brought us to this point.