Rental affordability has hit record lows in Sydney with low-income earners bearing the brunt of the crisis, according to the tenth annual National Shelter-SGS Economics and Planning Rental Affordability Index. And regional NSW is no longer a place of relative affordability 

In late November Shelter NSW, on behalf of National Shelter and along with SGS Economics and Planning hits the airwaves across the country to sound the alarm about the rapidly deteriorating situation being faced by low-income earners.  

The study compares rents to average incomes and revealed rents in Greater Sydney are significantly higher than any other region in Australia. While the median rental price in Sydney increased 10.8 per cent, raising $70 to $720 in the year through to June 2024, the average rental household income only increased by 5.5 per cent. The average rental household in regional NSW is now straddling the border between Moderately Unaffordable and Unaffordable rents. 

Throughout our many interviews (for print, radio and TV) we made our usual calls for NSW: 

• Increase social housing to at least 5% of all housing stock by 2027 and 10% by 2040 (to create a genuine alternative to the private rental market) 
• Stay the course of tenancy reform and go further – to regulate the size of rent increases 
• Urgently wind back the short-term rental market (which has gutted the traditional rental market in key regional towns) 
• Deliver thousands of regulated affordable rental dwellings within the Transport Oriented Development Program (TOD) – for the thousands of low-income workers especially who are being driven from Greater Sydney