An impressive range of expert speakers with both research and
lived experience representing the community sector and government addressed the
themes of the forum, many warning of a looming crisis as older Australians face
mounting pressure from rising rental prices and carrying mortgages into
retirement. They discussed new ways to address the changing housing needs of
older Australians including affordability, housing security and housing options
appropriate for older Australians, now and in the future.
With much
criticism of one of Australia’s biggest retirement village operators as “bleeding
residents until they die” in the news lately, the forum couldn’t have come at a
more pertinent time. Surprisingly only a small percentage (5.7%) of seniors actually
live in Australia’s 2,200 retirement villages , according to Ben Myers from the
Property Council of Australia. He told the forum that the average age of entry
to these villages was 75 with most staying about 7 years. The industry was now
facing some serious problems. Most of the residential village housing stock is
more than twenty years old and is often not what people want. These days village
residents demand cinemas, gyms and coffee shops on site, pet friendly policies,
communal gardens, and integration into the surrounding communities. One
solution is to make retirement village mixed age communities. Myers quoted
examples from Queensland where younger residents joined the villages where the
average age was 80 and bought back the choirs and volunteering that had been in
decline.
Providing
residential villages in regional areas was often difficult because housing
prices are currently not high enough for people to get sufficient equity to buy
into the villages, and construction costs are often too high in rural areas.
Opening the
forum, Ian Yates, CEO of COTA emphasised that the focus was on providing
affordable, accessible and appropriate housing for seniors, and not residential
aged care facilities. It costs the government as much as $34,000 a year to keep
a person in residential aged care compared with $4,000 -7,000 to provide home support
and care. Keeping people in their own homes and their own local community also
promoted social connectedness with consequent good effects on their health and wellbeing.
Overall,
there is good news on the housing front for the majority of Australia’s 65 plus
age group. But there is part of the population who are facing tough times.
Dr Judith
Yates from the University of Sydney’s School of Economics said that 84% of the
nation’s 65 plus are homeowners with 76% of that group owning their homes
outright. The remaining 8% have mostly modest mortgages, and therefore most
have very small housing costs. But private renters are in trouble, with about a
quarter of them spending more than 50% of their income on rent causing much
financial stress.
Renters also
have much lower amounts of assets to call upon in times of economic hardship
(the average is $1.2 million in super and property compared to under $200, 000
for renters). And this disparity will become even greater as the next
generations face retirement.
The forum’s
keynote speaker, John Daley CEO of the Grattan Institute (Australia’s leading
non -partisan domestic research institute) says there are storm clouds on the
horizon of housing accessibility for seniors.
Currently it’s
not a social catastrophe as today’s seniors are net savers not spenders and
will often pass away with more money in the bank than they retired with. But
there are serious issues for those renters who are on pensions. They often have
to skip meals, and are unable to pay utility and car registration costs so they
can meet housing costs.
Rates of
home ownership are falling for those in the 35-44, 44-54 age groups compared to
those today who are 65 plus for whom the home ownership rate is the same as it
was 35 years ago. In fifteen years’ time he predicts there will be
significantly fewer people owning their own home, and there will be a real
problem for renters as there has been little social housing built in the past
30 years. Currently the mix between private and social housing renters is about
fifty fifty. Those people who have managed to get into social housing now will
be staying on for many years so little will become available in the long term.
According to Daley the only people able to access social housing now are the
homeless and those suffering domestic violence.
And the
answer to getting more housing is not for today’s seniors to downsize from
their large suburban homes. When they downsize their choice is often limited to
high end low density dwellings like townhouses and duplexes. Daley says this
has arisen because those areas ripe for redevelopment- the medium density
suburbs 10-15k from the city centre, are precisely those suburbs where there
has been resistance to increasing the density of dwellings with apartments- the
NIMBYs. As people prefer to downsize to a location that offers them shops,
transport and community, most prefer to stay in the area they currently live
in. Affordability is not on their list of desirability. So when large family
home blocks are sold off, they are often replaced by high end town houses and
duplexes. What is needed is to force developers to create affordable housing in
larger developments and to ensure that the suburbs stay mixed as they are in
Europe.
Daley warned
of the shift from a system of stamp duty to land taxes which like rates would
be paid over time. When land values go up because of favourable developments
like trains and jobs then residents would pay more, and owners may have to seek
economic buffers like reverse mortgages.
He ended his
talk by saying that what is needed is policy reforms like owner occupied
housing being included in the asset test, and tax benefit and superannuation
reforms. These are political debates that have currently stalled but he says
when they next come to the fore they will run and run.
At the end
of the discussion on affordability the former Senator Susan Ryan and now Age
and Disability Discrimination Commissioner, raised the issue of the gender
divide. She pointed out that there are more than 700, 000 women over 45 on low
incomes who are single and do not own their own home. And John Daley agreed that
the housing issue was most serious for women and that the overwhelming number
of disadvantaged over 65s were women in single households and who are in the
private rental market.
Other
highlights of the Forum were the panel discussion about Affordable housing.
Adrian Pisarski from National Shelter pointed out that there is no reliable current
data about housing supply to inform policy decisions. More vulnerable people
are more likely to be displaced and are then more at risk of homelessness which
is on the rise including for older women. He mentioned Wintringham housing
service in Melbourne as one of only a few who provide housing services for
homeless people. Social housing is ‘broken’ and not meeting demand as the
government is not investing enough. He thinks that the Community Housing sector
has the capacity to increase supply but will always need investment from
government.
Jeff Fielder
from Housing for the Aged Action Group (HAAG) in Melbourne talked about their
operation as an information and support service for older people. They provide
early intervention for the growing number of older people at risk of
homelessness. Again he noted that the private rental market does not work for
older people because of short leases, high rentals and much lower rental
housing in very poor condition. There need to be more options for people to access
affordable housing equitably – public, community, independent living units,
rental villages, aged care linked housing, Abbeyfield model, residential parks,
shared living and a lot more advocacy. And he also noted that the aged care
sector is well placed to assist with advocacy and appropriate placements by
being better integrated with the housing and homelessness sector.
Lisa Langley
from COTA NSW presented some outcomes of research with older NSW residents
which tested attitudes and policy assumptions about housing which are made on
behalf of older people.
The panel
discussion about Accessible housing (regardless of age or ability) focused on
issues of universal design, with contributions from Denita Wawn, CEO Master
Builders Association, Sue Salthouse, Director of Rights and Inclusion Australia
and David Brant from the Australian Network for Universal Housing Design.
Contrary to the commercial market driven approach of the MBA, Sue Salthouse
emphasised that self regulation doesn’t serve the market which shouldn’t only
be driven by demand, an unreliable predictor of future longer term needs.
Housing needs to be provided within the framework of human rights and our
responsibilities under the relevant UN Conventions. She pointed out that all
housing needs to have accessible and appropriate features. There is a
complicated set of standards and regulations for builders, government and
providers which makes accessible housing very challenging to regulate.
David Brant
picked up this issue saying that there needs to be more regulation and all new
housing must meet a single basic accessible standard which ANUHB is lobbying
for. This includes easy access from the outside (including lifts), internal
ramps with no steps, wide doorways and halls, accessible toilet and bathroom
and capacity for carer sleepover. This is slowly being implemented, especially
in Victoria. This will ultimately be very cost effective by contributing to
preventing older people being admitted (no falls, general safety) to aged care
facilities.
The
overlooked but very important issue was raised about older people living in
rural and remote communities. They are unable to stay ‘home’ but can’t afford
to move and are ineligible for assistance. This highlights the broader issue of
lack of appropriate affordable services for remote communities.
For more
information about the Forum go to the COTA Australia website where most of the
presentations are available to download:
Sue Andrews
Ros Lawson
Marion
Reilly
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