High price of housing could squeeze key workers out of ACT

They risk being squeezed out of the housing market by high prices, driven partly by Canberra's high salaries.

Alarm over the growing problem has prompted a local housing and homelessness policy consortium to launch a major project to focus on housing for key workers.

Leigh Watson, ACT Shelter executive officer, said the greatest impact of housing affordability was on those with casual, temporary and lower-wage jobs.

These includes community service workers, childcare workers, aged-care workers, casual teachers, nurses, retail and hospitality workers, labourers and administrative staff, as well as apprentices, trainees and students.

"We believe there is a possibility that we will be in short supply of people like that in the future because they will not be able to afford housing," she said.

"Many of these industries are critical to the growth and diversification of the ACT economy.

"Housing stress may be greatest for single-income families. However, given the scale of housing affordability issues, many dual-income families face housing stress.

"For single and dual-income individuals and families, housing affordability issues may therefore affect career and lifestyle choices, such as whether to have children, stay in or move to Canberra, obtain further education or training, or whether to pursue employment opportunities.

"We're hoping to find out whether people are choosing not to stay in Canberra or not to come here because they can't afford to.

"Some options we're looking at are ideas that actually give people a bite of the housing cherry in terms of home ownership, things like shared equity, community land trusts, affordable housing loans and co-operative living."

James O'Donnell, ACT Shelter policy adviser, said Canberra was regularly ranked as one of the most affordable places to live.

"This is mostly driven by, as we know, relatively high incomes for most people, but housing, in fact, is quite expensive both for renters and people with mortgages," he said.

"For low and moderate-income households, housing is actually very expensive and potentially unaffordable.

"We want to explore affordability for low and moderate-income households, particularly for working families; for families that work in some important occupations in our community, such as community service workers, childcare workers, aged-care workers, even teachers, but also apprentices and students.

"We want to tease out and identify some of the affordability issues for them and where they might be facing household stress or affordability issues and where they might be making compromises in their life, such as whether they are able to purchase their own home or whether they have to continue renting or have to stay at home.

"All of these things are going to impact on their quality of life and their career choices, so how well are we able to keep people in some of these key occupations?

"One of the compromises that people have to make is whether they stay in Canberra or look elsewhere; whether they have to move to some of the surrounding areas like Goulburn and even further afield.

"That impacts on how well we are able to not only retain workers in these occupations, but also how we can attract workers, especially young apprentices.

"We know it is very expensive to live in Canberra while doing an apprenticeship."

The consortium will survey households as it generates ideas to deal with the issue.

"We really want to identify and address housing affordability and housing stress for families and households that are working in important occupations in the ACT," Mr O'Donnell said.

"We want to develop some solutions and put some policies on the table that will provide affordability housing options for those families."

ACT Shelter is the leading organisation in a group that includes ACT Council of Social Service, the Youth Coalition of the ACT and the Women's Centre for Health Matters.