The high cost of housing is a critical problem in New South Wales and across Australia. No one is worse affected than tenants.

About 862 000 Australian households are in housing stress (that is, they have a low income and spend more than 30 per cent of their income on housing). Most of these households - about 515 000, or 60 per cent of them – are renting.

Housing stress is common in rental housing. About 65 per cent of low-income renting households are in housing stress. About 25 per cent of all renting households are low-income households in housing stress.

(Making matters worse, these figures are from 2002-03: since then, the supply of new rental housing has constricted, rents have increased and there can be no doubt that affordability problems have gotten worse.)

We have too few rental properties that are affordable to low-income households. We have too few opportunities for low-income and moderate-income households to buy houses affordably.

We have a tax system that has encouraged wealthy households to over-spend on their own housing, and speculators and tax-manipulators to over-borrow and over-spend on unaffordable investment housing.

We have a planning system that frustrates attempts to plan for affordable housing.

We have a social housing system that is starved of funds and shrinking relative to the whole housing system.

The TU supports the campaigns by National Shelter, the National Affordable Housing Summit Group and Shelter NSW for all levels of government to develop affordable housing strategies and create more affordable housing – especially affordable rental housing.