Australia @aussie.zone melbaboutown @aussie.zone 3mo ago

One in five Australian renters are living without essential items and in poverty, peak body study finds

www.abc.net.au Struggling Australians being forced into poverty with 'nowhere affordable to live'

More than 20 per cent of Australian renters are living in poverty after their rent has been paid, a new study has found.

12 comments

We're paying $39k/year for a 3x2. There are full time jobs out there paying less than that. Yes, we're in a nice location, but awful locations are not that much cheaper.

I am not surprised many people are doing it tough. The median salary in Australia is currently $80k. Take $16.5k for tax and you're left with $63.5k take-home. Say you find a cheap house to rent at only $30k/ year ($575/week - doable for now, but you're likely far from town).

Now your family is living on $33.5k for the year. Less than $650 a week for everything else. Food, transport, utilities, etc.

$80k was a good salary 10 years ago. I don't know how you could raise a family on it, today. And half of Australia is making less than that!
- $80k was a good salary 10 years ago. I don't know how you could raise a family on it, today. And half of Australia is making less than that!
  
  You can do it, but:
  
  You can't live within 1.5 hours of capital cities or major regional cities.
  
  You can't live in a mining town.
  
  You can't live in a tourist town.
  
  Unfortunately all the left over places have shit job opportunities, shit services, and are generally classified as shit areas as a result.
  
  So until you advance enough in a career that you can pull a tree change to somewhere less pricey and still keep your income, you're screwed.
  
  and are generally classified as shit areas as a result.
  
  But that's subjective yeah ? I'm hear visiting my 83yr old mother on the Sunshine Coast over Christmas, this place is to me a literal "shit hole". It's mostly a sprawling mess of hot terrible housing with acres of concrete and asphalt with a car needed to do anything and zero redeeming qualities. For a few days prior I visited my sister in Brisbane, another sprawling mess of hot terrible housing with zero redeeming features.
  
  I used to live in an apartment I owned on the 10th floor with an ocean view on the Gold Coast, cool beezes, a walk to swimmable broadwater and a tram and train were some compensation.
  
  The tiny rural town in Tasmania I now live in to me is comparative nirvana. There are basic houses near me for sale starting with a 3 and quite nice ones starting with a 4. We have a little van, as for sure u need a car occasionally but we mostly walk or cycke. I filled it up in August and it's still on 1/2 a tank.
- Yeah that 'average salary' is lies damned lies and statistics
  
  The actual median personal income is around $58k
  
  When you break it down by region it makes a bit more sense but plenty of people are still doing it tough.
  
  In this release, 'migrants' refers to people who have arrived in Australia since January 2000, and includes permanent migrants who have become Australian citizens during this period.
  
  Is that a peculiar way to be refered to. When is an Australian citizen not a migrant ?
  
  Yeah that 'average salary' is lies damned lies and statistics
  
  Only if you don't understand the difference between avergae (mean) and median. A kid working at Maccas twice a week can skew the diffeence as much as the repugnant wage paid to the Macquaire Bank CEO.
  
  Average salary metrics are useless in an era of CEOs and executives getting paid millions a year.
  
  I admit that I was surprised that $80k was median salary - I just asked Google "Median Salary Australia" and didn't follow the links etc. Your source is great, but three financial years old. Seek reckon the current median salary is $65k, though their ads probably skew a tad high. It isn't enough of a difference from $58k to argue much over.
  
  $58k or $65k (or even $80k), it doesn't change the point I was making: It is not at all surprising that people are doing it tough.
Is a 3x1 a 3 bedroom 1 bath apartment?
- Yes. A 3x1 = 3bed and 1bath. 3x2 = 3bed 2 bath, and so on. Doesn't have to be apartment or house specific either. My current apartment is 2x1 and the house I was renting previously was 3x1.

12 comments