Blame is cheaper than building

Every few months, Australia’s housing debate finds its way back to the same front door. Rents are up, vacancies are scarce, and somewhere near a university an international student is unpacking a suitcase. The conclusion gets drawn before the evidence arrives.

The evidence is not hard to find. International students make up about 6 per cent of Australia’s renters, according to Mandala Partners’ modelling for the Student Accommodation Council, and roughly 40 per cent of them live in university halls or purpose-built accommodation, outside the private market altogether. The Reserve Bank has done the arithmetic on their post-pandemic return: an extra 50,000 renters lifts rents by about half a per cent. University of South Australia researchers examined 70 data points across seven years and found no consistent link between student numbers and rents at all.

Meanwhile, the numbers that should embarrass the country sit in plain view. Australia completed about 173,000 homes in the year to March, against a National Housing Accord pace of 240,000. The Accord’s first 18 months ran roughly 55,000 homes behind demand. In a year, Woollahra approved 113 dwellings, Mosman 48 and Waverley 152, while the outer suburbs carried the load. None of that was caused by a nursing student from Kochi.

Yet the student cap was sold, in part, as rent relief. Mandala priced that relief at about five dollars a week. For five dollars a week, Australia put a $50 billion export industry through two years of turbulence and told its second-largest source of students, India’s sons and daughters among them, that they were the problem.

We understand the temptation. A visible newcomer is easier to blame than an invisible planning system. A visa setting can be changed with a press release; a housing pipeline takes a decade to fix. Blame is cheaper than building. It is also useless. Migration has fallen for two consecutive years, and rents rose anyway.

Our readers live on both sides of this ledger. Indian-Australian families rent in the same tight suburbs, bid at the same inspections, and welcome the students who fill the same lecture halls. They do not need the queue explained to them. They need homes built.

So here is a modest proposal for the next housing debate: spend one week arguing about cranes with the energy currently spent arguing about students. The day that happens, the crisis will finally have met its match.

Related reading: whether students drive up rents and buying with a 5 per cent deposit.