There is such a group, which accounts for 1/3 of the total population, and is still growing. Compared with other groups, they are under much greater pressure to afford housing, but they have never received much sympathy from politicians, voters or the media.
Ironically, the little sympathy they have recently received is not guaranteed.
They are the forgotten few-more neglected than the forgotten ones that we can remember.
They are tenants.
They are forgotten because we live in a place where only home ownership is recognized as a real estate belief. This is a country that serves homeowners and is ruled by homeowners.
By now, you may have thought of a sacred group known as the "homeowner"-in fact, potential homeowners-who are now tenants. They must have had a little sympathy, right?
Well, not at all. We claim to be compassionate, but not. That's because economists have been tiresome to point out that everything we do in the name of helping potential homeowners-first-hand subsidies or stamp duty breaks-and homeowners are exempt from capital gains tax. Even tax deductions-actually at the expense of potential homeowners-benefit existing homeowners.
These factors have fuelled demand for housing relative to supply, pushing up house prices and making it harder to afford.
Politicians are almost always reluctant to help potential homeowners by cancelling them because they know how angry existing homeowners would be if they did.
But back to the tenants, why are we not interested in them and their problems? Part of the reason is that in a world where home ownership is more important than everything else, renting is seen as a temporary transition, with young people saving up for down payments.
Unfortunately, over time, this assumption has become increasingly untrue. When I started working in the mid-1970s, we were particularly proud of Australia's 70% homeownership rate. Since then, it has been falling slowly and mercilessly.
This means that the percentage of tenants has been on the rise since then. Of course, many people still get to buy a house, but it will take much longer.
Another reason why we are so uninterested in tenants is that because almost all of us aspire to own our own houses, those who have never owned a house-those who rent a house for life-are people who can never afford to buy a house. Who spends so much time worrying about the poor?
But over time, this is becoming less and more true, as many middle-income people spend more of their lives renting.
At that time, we relied on the Housing Committee to erase the poor from their conscience. Over the years since then, the enthusiasm of the, government, federal government and the state government for what we now euphemistically call "social housing" (including "comfortable housing") is a further sign of our lack of interest in tenants.
The latest HILDA report-a long-term family funded by Australia's government, Income and Labor Dynamics Survey-contains the most detailed chapter on tenants by Professor Roger Wilkins (Roger Wilkins) of the Melbourne Institute at the University of Melbourne.
Wilkins said tenants of social housing are 10 percentage points more likely to experience financial difficulties than those who own them completely. Private tenants are 15 percentage points higher.
According to HILDA, household income distribution is at the bottom 40 percent, and households that use more than 30 percent of their income to pay home loans or rent are seen as "housing pressures." (many high-income families spend more than 30% of their income on it, but this is an affordable option.)
The proportion of private tenants under housing pressure rose from nearly 18% at the turn of the century to 20% at the end of the decade, and has since been at that level.