Australia

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The organisations – which include the Australian Council of Social Services, the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia and National Shelter – say decades of poor policy choices by successive governments, including investor tax incentives and the chronic undersupply of social housing, have fuelled the crisis.

They point to fresh analysis from SQM Research that shows weekly asking rents rose by $84 nationally in the two-year period when Australia’s borders were closed between March 2020 and February 2022.

In a letter to Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton, the groups said: “We write following the rise in disturbing rhetoric linking Australia’s migration levels to the current housing crisis.

We are deeply concerned that migrant communities are being scapegoated as the primary reason for this crisis.” The letter did not give examples or criticise any specific politicians.

CoreLogic’s head of residential research, Eliza Owen, said migration had affected the rental market but it was “definitely not fair to only target overseas migrants as something that is contributing to the housing crisis”.

She said a key driver was the change in average household size, which had decreased since the start of the pandemic from about 2.6 people to below 2.5, meaning more homes are need to house the population.

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