00:00look this data is not surprising to us unfortunately but it is heartbreaking and it does give us the
00:10data and evidence to prove what we've been saying for a very long time that people are
00:15doing it really tough here more people are presenting to homelessness services more people
00:21are really struggling and pretty much everybody here knows someone who's really finding it
00:26difficult to find a rental or keep a rental so it's becoming more and more difficult for so many
00:32people to keep a roof over their heads yeah what is behind this steep increase that you're seeing
00:38there well i think there's a few things we've got really tight rental market we don't have a lot of
00:44vacancies there's been underinvestment unfortunately in social housing for many decades so we're still
00:50playing a lot of catch-up we've got a short-term rental market that is booming but unfortunately
00:57that does take out some long-term rental accommodation out of market so all of these things are sort of
01:05adding up and we're seeing a very small number of rentals and very expensive so unaffordable for so
01:13many people and you know this report is really showing how we're seeing runaway rents compared
01:19to the increase in salaries the gap is enormous and it's impacting so many people now we spoke with
01:26the ceo of tenants the tenants union of new south wales earlier he said that supply is a problem as
01:32you're outlining but even within that the state's often not seeing the right type of housing being
01:36supplied or in the places that really need it is that what you're seeing there in wa
01:40look what i will say is we have a very active state government we have certainly have a housing
01:48minister who is really trying to get houses on the ground but we are in a crisis a homelessness and
01:55housing crisis so the scale to which we need is is is dramatic so what we're calling for is around
02:035 000 new homes social and affordable homes per year for the foreseeable future now we realize that you
02:10can't build that many homes that quickly with the workforce that we have but there are other
02:15ways to be able to pull stock back into the market from the short-term rental market by repurposing
02:22buildings and we're seeing some of that already and we're really welcoming that
02:27so and we're also seeing more bills so modular building that kind of thing so we need to look at all of
02:33those options so we've got enough social and affordable housing because what we've really
02:37got in wa is an affordability gap people really being priced out of the private market and you
02:44mentioned you know the types of legislation changes that you'd be calling for there there's been recent
02:49legislation in the state that's limited rent increases to once a year and with two months notice
02:54as i understand it also rent bidding banned this was heralded at the time as a step forward has it
03:00been look we really welcomed those changes and that was a really positive step i think what we need to
03:07do now is see some more steps that are really going to change things in in wa so we'd really like to see
03:13some rent stabilization we can't keep seeing this upward spiral in rents it's really damaging for people
03:19so we'd really like to see something similar to what the act has done and what this report is showing
03:25gemma is the act is the only state that is even close to rental increases with salary increases so we'd
03:34really like to see some rent stabilization in wa i think that's the most important thing for us
03:39and as i said we'd really like to see some perhaps stronger regulations and we have seen some with the
03:45short-term rental market and that 5 000 number bringing back social and affordable housing 5 000 per year
03:53is going to be really important for our supply
03:56you
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