We have spent decades treating renting as a waiting room for ownership. Policy followed the comfortable myth that everyone would eventually move on to a mortgage.

Very little effort went into making renting secure, stable or fair because it didn't seem necessary. Everyone was just passing through.

That assumption has collapsed. For many, renting is no longer a phase but a condition, stretching across working lives and child-rearing years.

Renting has expanded not because it was planned, but because ownership has retreated. The divide between owners and purchasers has become a gulf.

The divide into three

To bridge the gulf between owner and renter, we have to look at who holds the keys. The rental market is split into three. Private owners make up the first third at 22%. These are mostly accidental landlords holding dwellings never intended as long-term rental stock.

The remainder is a mix of state public housing (3%), community housing providers (3%), and commercial build-to-rent (3%). Because we rely on a speculative market where investors respond to interest rates, supply follows investor behaviour rather than renter need. The risk sits entirely with the tenant. This is a failure of stewardship.

The owner holds the asset and the leverage, while the household carries the exposure to insecurity. The organising principle is liquidity for the owner and insecurity for the tenant.

A shift in management

We need to move management away from market-based real estate agents and into the hands of community housing providers (CHPs) and nonprofits. These organisations operate on stewardship. Their focus is continuity and long-term occupation. They benefit from discounted land and construction, allowing them to offer rents at 25% to 50% of market rates.

These organisations gained impetus in NSW a decade ago when public housing stock was passed to them. They are run by boards with a responsibility to manage and expand portfolios from rental income.

CHPs benefit from discounted land and construction, allowing them to run as commercial organisations that rent properties at affordable rates to qualified tenants.

They are small organisations tied to local communities rather than a large bureaucracy. This model allows for the 20-year lease. A two-decade contract turns a shelter into a home. It allows a family to stay in one school and older Australians to grow old with dignity.

Parallel to this is the rise of commercial Build-to-Rent (BTR) and faith-based initiatives. By contributing land at nil cost, these models can offer rents at 25% to 50% of market rates.

The NSW Faith Housing Alliance is repurposing lapsed church land for mission-led housing, moving beyond the large, state-based bureaucracies.

The quality mandate

The quality of rental housing as a legislative failure. Rental properties are often treated as substandard investment vehicles rather than dwellings. If you rent a property in NSW, it should not just have a working smoke detector. It must meet the Building Code of Australia (BCA) standards for thermal performance and health.

If a dwelling is not up to standard, it should not be on the market. It needs to be upgraded before the first tenant walks through the door. That upgrade must include PV solar panels. We have a split incentive problem in this country.

Landlords will not pay for solar because they do not pay the power bill. It is a nonsense that heavily punishes the renter. Mandating solar for every rental property is a direct, pragmatic fix for the cost-of-living crisis.

The new face of the renter

We need to stop the patronising narrative treating "renter" as a synonym for "failed buyer”. The demographic is diverse. Many are renters by choice. These are professionals and families who prioritise the social infrastructure of a suburb over the weight of a thirty-year debt. Others have no option and require affordable or social housing. A fair system must accommodate both without the provisional stigma.

The system needs to accommodate both without the provisional stigma. We need dedicated Build-to-Rent (BTR) buildings that are not just rebadged boarding houses. The design quality of recent projects under the Housing SEPP has been poor. If we build quality, the community will follow

A foundation for life

So what does a 'fair rental system' actually mean? It means stability and predictability. It is the ability to live a life without constant displacement. Policy responses tend to fuss around the edges with lease lengths and minimum standards, but they do not change the structure.

Systems built primarily around investment struggle to deliver stability, no matter how much regulatory tinkering is applied.

The goal of housing policy should be to provide a stable foundation for a life, not just a temporary roof. We have all the necessary tools: the community management models, the technical BCA standards, and the local manufacturing capability.

We simply need to prioritise the security of the occupant over the flexibility of the asset. The provisional era of Australian renting must end to make way for a system built on permanence and quality.

Australia never built such a system because it assumed renters would eventually leave. Rental inequality accumulated slowly, as ownership narrowed and renting stretched while policy clung to reality-defying assumptions. The system is not broken. It is working exactly as designed.

‘Housing Australia – Noun + Verb' is a forthcoming book by Tone Wheeler, collecting fifty years of work on philosophy, policies, projects, planning, processes and the practice of housing.

Tone Wheeler

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