“You can’t build a career or a family or join a community when you have so much uncertainty in your head, and everyone, literally everyone you talk to has been kicked out of two, three, four rental apartments,” Minns said.
“Young people feel – and this is true of everyone you talk to – that they are being pushed out of the city they grew up in and that their opportunities to have a roof over their heads are almost nonexistent.”
Standing in line for a rental property. It’s a landlord’s market.Credit: Paul Rovere
Sydney loses about 7,000 people aged between 30 and 40 to the regions or other states each year. Between 2016 and 2021, Sydney lost twice as many people in this age group as it gained (35,000 came to Sydney, but 70,000 left).
Under the rental reform, property owners must provide a reason for terminating a tenancy, both for permanent and fixed-term leases. Under existing rules, this is the case, for example, if the tenant is responsible for damage to the property or for non-payment of rent.
Other reasons include when the property is sold or offered for sale while vacant, or when the owner decides to move into the house.
Minns said the government’s housing policy had four pillars: major changes to planning laws, including transit-oriented developments (which the coalition is trying to stop), the “biggest investment ever” in public housing, the sale and development of surplus state land, and changes to rental prices.
According to Chris Minns, the Premier of New South Wales, the housing crisis is his government’s biggest problem.Credit: Nikki Short
“These four things together form the foundation and we will always come back to them,” Minns said.
The opposition accused Minns of pursuing a privatisation agenda with the policy of selling surplus state land for housing, but the Prime Minister said the Labor Party had a mandate to do so after putting the plan forward at the polls.
A government land review is underway and has identified the first of 44 sites for housing, including North Eveleigh, Kellyville, Camden and Camperdown.
In the June budget, the government announced that 30,000 well-located homes would be built by government and the private sector on land identified through the land review process, as well as other land already rezoned. This was part of a $5.1 billion commitment to build 6,200 additional public homes over the next four years.
Although Minns insists that no evictions are required, the policy has faced significant opposition from some investor groups, who told a parliamentary inquiry last month that landlords would invest elsewhere if the changes were forced on them.
The inquiry, chaired by Greens MP for Newtown Jenny Leong, was heard by the Property Investors Council of Australia, which warned that property clearance laws introduced in Victoria in 2021 had “caught most property investors by surprise” and caused “thousands” to leave the market.
“Data reported in the December 2023 quarter indicated a net loss of 11,789 rental properties in the calendar year, in the most recent March quarter data this net loss of rental properties has now increased to 15,607,” the council said in a letter.
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