Geelong essential workers’ housing woes have deepened with a new report revealing a further slide in the number of rental properties within reach of nurses, teachers and firefighters.
Anglicare Australia’s 2025 Rental Affordability Snapshot paints a grim picture for frontline workers, finding they are priced out of up to 95 per cent of the region’s rentals.
Rental housing affordability fell across 15 of the 16 occupations measured, with only ambulance officers experiencing a negligible improvement.
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Occupational therapist Beth Crosby purchased her first home in Armstrong Creek with help from a Villawood essential workers’ grant.
The number of Geelong properties a typical teacher could afford fell 1.2 per cent to 5.4 per cent, while for hospitality workers and meat packers only 2.2 per cent of listings were within reach.
Anglicare Australia executive director Kasy Chambers said it was alarming that affordability had again gone backwards.
“It is a national disgrace that the people we all rely on – nurses, teachers, care workers and cleaners – cannot afford a secure place to live,” she said.
“These should not be people who are living below the poverty line. If you think about a couple of the occupation we have in here, they are four-year degrees, like early childhood educators and teachers.
“Yet the highest affordability of any of those occupations is teachers and they could only afford 3 per cent of places nationally so I think it’s really serious.”
Anglicare Australia executive director Kasy Chambers. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman
The researched is modelled on a single person working full time, earning the latest award rates, and includes shares houses.
The report found that while rental listings increased by 26 per cent across Victoria year-on-year and 13 per cent nationally, this didn’t translate into greater affordability.
Ms Chambers said wage growth had also improved to the point where it outstripped rent rises, but this also made little material difference.
She said tax reform was critical to improving essential workers’s access to secure housing close to where their communities needed them.
This two-bedroom unit at 1/2 Upper Skene St, Newtown, is listed for rent for $460 per week.
This three-bedroom house at 1 Nikola Court, Marshall, is advertised to rent for $520 per week.
“Supply is not the silver bullet and they are making the assumption that if just throw supply at the market it will down into affordable housing and, just like trickle down economics, it doesn’t work,” she said.
Instead, she called for money spent on supporting the private rental market through Commonwealth Rent Assistance, negative gearing and capital gains to instead be redirected to social housing and homelessness initiatives.
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