"Bedroom stress" sounds like a phrase more commonly spouted by Cleo writers than a university lecturer, especially one speaking about property.
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But when he took the stage at Politics in the Pub's housing forum last night, University of Canberra lecturer Andrew MacKenzie declared that Canberra had it – and had it bad.
Using the example of Bonner, Mr MacKenzie said Canberrans were paying thousands of dollars each year for rooms left unoccupied in oversized houses.
"Bonner has 1500 residents but there are 1800 bedrooms," he said.
"Assuming that households listed as couples share at least one bedroom... I would estimate that 730 of the 1780 bedrooms in Bonner aren't actually used. That's 40 per cent, 40 per cent of the bedrooms are empty."
Mr MacKenzie – a lecturer in landscape architecture – said that with a median average annual mortgage of $27,800 and average annual rent of $25,800, Bonner residents were handing over thousands of dollars each year for the unused rooms.
"Maybe we should design houses that reflect the needs of the community and those who occupy them," he said.
The forum, hosted by the Australia Institute and ACT Shelter, also covered concerns about access to affordable housing and homelessness in the capital.
ACTCOSS director Roslyn Dundas declared the issue a hidden problem, with many of those affected shifting between shelters, cars and the hospitality of friends.
"Across any given year we have over 3500 people experiencing homelessness in the ACT - that's one out of every 101 people within the community," she said.
"To top that off in terms of our public housing space, where people are trying to get into to address their homelessness, we have a waiting list of nearly 2000 individuals."
Ms Dundas said if people weren't deemed an "extreme priority", they could wait on the list for as long as 546 days.
"That's a year and a half," she said.
"That's why we need to put the resources there because at the moment, by continuing to not address the homelessness issue within the ACT, we're excluding these people from our community."
Chair of National Shelter Adrian Pisarki also spoke on the history of public housing expenditure, deeming the Howard Government's disinvestments as "the greatest crime perpetrated by an Australian Government in Australia's history".
Have you been left paying for an essentially empty house?
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