What is considered ‘affordable’ housing – and who decides?

“Some jurisdictions refer to rental housing only, for others it includes homeownership as well as rental.”

A spokesperson for Queensland’s Department of Housing, Local Government, Planning and Public Works said programs and initiatives with different objectives define affordable housing “slightly differently”.

But that spokesperson gave me a ballpark figure. “Housing is generally considered to be affordable for low to moderate income households where they spend no more than 30 per cent of gross household income on housing costs.”

They added that, as per the National Housing Accord, affordable housing is generally taken to refer to rental housing that is provided at below-market rent to qualifying tenants – usually between 70 per cent and 80 per cent of market rent.

If that’s our benchmark, how is Brisbane going?

The latest projections from Jobs Queensland show the fastest growing sector of the workforce is people in health care and social assistance roles. Their average weekly wage is $1248, just below Brisbane’s median weekly earnings. That caps weekly housing expenses at about $390 for a single income.

For them, “affordable housing” would look like rentals under $400 per week, close to the hospitals where they work, or public transport hubs that let them get there.

Proposals around South Brisbane come to mind. If they are the right kind of development for what the city needs, then a nurse should be able to buy or rent an apartment there. But can they? Or have the new developments in that suburb been built for the rich?

Last week, a rental affordability index showed it is unaffordable for the average household to rent in every city aside from the ACT – the one jurisdiction in Australia where a rent cap has been implemented.

It found rents in Greater Brisbane have increased 56.8 per cent since 2014, from a weekly average of $389 to $610. In the same period, the average annual income for the region has increased 36.7 per cent, with the average rental household in Greater Brisbane earning a gross income of $110,347 in 2024.

Loading

The median rent eats up 29 per cent of that figure – and so the city as a whole is considered “moderately unaffordable”. It’s a more complex picture at the level of individual postcodes, with areas in Redlands and around Samford Valley landing in the “severely unaffordable” category. According to the index, not a single Brisbane suburb is “affordable”.

As someone recently forced to wade back into the city’s rental market, I know those statistics hide something else. Even if renters are willing to sacrifice a higher percentage of their weekly earnings to secure a place to live, real estate agents rarely accept applicants who would have to spend more than 30 per cent of their weekly income on rent.

Affordability is no better for would-be buyers. The recent ANZ/CoreLogic housing affordability report found it now takes 10.6 years to save for a 20 per cent deposit, and it takes 50.6 per cent of the average household income to afford repayments on a median home.

As the report’s author Eliza Owen put it, the median home is well out of reach of the median household.

Loading

We need more affordable housing, for more of the population. But where, how and when?

This week, the federal parliament is set to pass the government’s Help to Buy scheme to support home buyers, and the Build to Rent policy to encourage investment in new homes, after Labor secured support from the Greens.

The Greens said on Monday they had pushed Labor as hard as they could on policies including rent caps, reforming negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions, and committing additional funding to social and affordable homes.

There are arguments over every policy in this space, but what stands out is how many have called for more affordable housing, without expecting people to interrogate what that actually means.

Should councils continue to wave through developments that won’t deliver affordable property to first-buyers, low and moderate earners, and renters? Can we expect affordable rentals to manifest in an unregulated private market? Who ensures housing is distributed to those who need it most, not those building personal capital?

Affordable housing shouldn’t be an esoteric idea. Politicians shouldn’t just call for “more” of it, they should be able to say how it will be delivered and who it will benefit. When the entire city is classified as unaffordable – who is being bold enough to do something about it?

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.