There’s a name for it
Posted: January 22, 2017 Filed under: FEMINISM, Single Motherhood | Tags: housing affordability, housing crisis, housing distress, housing poverty, hpuse prices, insomnia, rent, single mother debts, single mother poverty, Sydney rental prices 2 CommentsI received an email yesterday:
We are worried about the future of your mortgage
What mortgage? I thought as I lay awake at 3am. Then I found out that there’s a name for the cause of my insomnia: housing poverty. I pay 65% of my income in rent every week. I’m not in debt but I’m about three pay days away from severe financial distress. So most nights I wake at 2am wondering how I’m going to manage and stay awake until 4am.
Housing poverty occurs when people who fall in the bottom 40% of wage earners put more than 30% of their weekly take-home pay into housing, which reduces their capacity to save money and thus their financial resilience.
According to an analysis by the Council to Homeless Persons, those paying rent alone on the average weekly wage for women would be priced out of all but one inner Melbourne suburb and even outer Sydney.
Jenny Smith, the chief executive of Council to Homeless Persons and chair of national peak body Homelessness Australia, said the situation for many single women was untenable and left them vulnerable to homelessness in the event of a crisis, like losing their job or a high medical bill.
“When you look at your average single woman on an average wage, you can see it’s very, very difficult to rent anywhere reasonable,” Smith told Guardian Australia.
“If you do, you are essentially putting yourself into a poverty situation.”
Sydney is a wonderful city, offering so much, but how can we revel in art and music and the joys of life when we financially stressed to breaking point? Single motherhood can be an exhausting cycle of taking time away from work to focus on motherhood, then overworking to earn enough money to pay back debt. And this is compounded when children have any kind of health issues. Maternity leave when kids are small and most need an involved parent impacts women’s ability to earn enough to support their children. My financial stress is caused by:
- Ridiculous Sydney housing prices
- Father who doesn’t pay for his children
- Working in the highly rewarding but low-paid arts sector for my entire career
- No politician with the balls to take on negative gearing/capital gains tax and make affordable housing a priority
Single working women on average wages in Sydney and most of Melbourne cannot afford to live alone. Men can. Does that seem fair to you Bernard Salt? I’m going to keep eating smashed avocado as I can’t pay for my own home with room for all my kids. Oh well. I could possibly live in a bus shelter when I’m old and it will be peaceful sharing with our cat.
loupollard 
Sing it sister ! It so doesn’t help when land valuations keep making massive leaps , on my previous rental there was a jump of 48% so we left , after 2 years in a new place ( which I took at an increase of 17% ) the rent has just increased by 11% – nice place but no air con , no built ins, no dishwasher , no garage – nothing that warrants a really high price other than it’s a house and it’s in Sydney . So …. do I put myself on the list after filling out the encyclopaedia that is required to get public housing ? I’m not sick , I’m not desperate , I have jobs so I don’t want to add to that list that has a 10 year waiting time . Just sick of the real estate greed , not just from the industry but also from ordinary Australian investors . Lucky them to have homes and investments.
AGH!! I’m sick of the hideous real estate agents too. When will the bubble burst?