A couple who moved to Australia from India are urging the Albanian government to urgently reduce immigration.
Himanshu Verma and his wife Shivani, who moved from India to Sydney seven years ago, highlighted the challenges of the housing crisis, which left them and many other migrants struggling.
Although the couple themselves are relatively recent migrants, Mr Verma said the government had to look at reducing immigration as there was not enough housing to accommodate the huge influx of people.
“It’s getting worse, everything is going up in price, even a carton of milk now costs a lot more than before,” Ms Verma said.
The couple have a young daughter and Mr Verma works full-time, while his wife stopped working in December and is now trying to start her own business.
Himanshu Verma and his wife Shivani. Despite being an immigrant himself, Mr Verma said the government needed to reassess immigration because of the housing shortage
Recent migrants feel to blame for the housing crisis
An Essential Research survey conducted for Settlement Services International (SSI) found that 43 percent of those from a migrant and refugee background were likely to have experienced difficulty finding affordable housing in the past 12 months.
More than 1,160 people were surveyed, including people from a migrant or refugee background and people born in Australia who spoke only English.
The research by the organisation, which has to resettle thousands of newly arrived refugees every year, also found that more than a quarter (26 per cent) had been forced to leave a property in the past year due to rising housing costs.
Haitham Subhi, a housing expert at SSI, said the private rental market has become more expensive and scarce in a post-COVID landscape, with average rents around $200 higher than before the pandemic.
About half of migrants and refugees surveyed (49 percent) felt they were being unfairly blamed as the main cause of Australia’s affordability crisis.
“They feel the tension and just want a chance to start their new life.”
“The process itself is quite intimidating because… you’re immediately put at the bottom of the list.”
Ariet Oko Agwa, an Ethiopian refugee who came to Australia about six years ago, almost slept in her car between Brisbane and the Gold Coast with her five-year-old son.
“I’ve applied to a lot of houses and they’ve all been rejected and when I call them (real estate agents) they don’t give a reason.”
They were rescued at the last minute by members of her community, who slept the night in a friend’s garage.
“I almost became homeless and then one of the ladies (from the Ethiopian community) told me that instead of sleeping in your car, you can sleep in our garage because they had three bedrooms but they were full,” she said.
The struggle to find a suitable home continues for the 25-year-old single mother who grew up in Kenya’s Dadaab, one of the largest refugee camps in the world.
The disability care worker lives in shared accommodation near the Gold Coast and pays almost $600 a fortnight for a small bedroom.
Mrs. Oko Agwa claims it is not a conducive environment to raise her son.
She has learned to live a meager life with just a single bed in their small room after all her furniture was destroyed during torrential flooding in south-east Queensland two years ago.
‘It is very difficult to find a house on your own. Maybe because I’m not from this country,” she said.
Ariet Oko Agwa was almost homeless due to the lack of affordable housing.
A record 548,800 net migrants moved to Australia in the year to September and Treasurer Jim Chalmers has admitted the huge influx of international students has created a serious housing shortage
Budget plan to tackle the housing crisis
A nationwide spike in the number of people coming to Australia over the past year recently prompted the federal government to announce an overhaul of the migration system, including a plan to halve net overseas migration by 2025.
A record 548,800 net migrants moved to Australia in the year to September and Treasurer Jim Chalmers has admitted the huge influx of international students has created a serious housing shortage.
With elections within a year, the Treasury now expects immigration inflows to shrink to 395,000 by 2023/2024.
By the end of 2024/2025, foreign inflows are expected to halve to just 260,000 – down from 528,000 in 2022/2023.
But a net 1.38 million migrants are still expected to move to Australia in the five years to 2027/28.
A huge influx of international students since Australia reopened from the Covid pandemic in late 2021 has led to a housing crisis, with the capital’s vacancy rate now below one per cent, leading to double-digit annual increases in weekly rentals.
Dr. Chalmers used his third budget speech on Tuesday night to admit that the huge influx of international students under Labor’s watch has worsened the housing crisis.
“Australia’s international education sector is a national asset. “But for too long, enrollments have grown without being matched by an increase in the supply of student housing,” he said.
‘This is putting pressure on prices and rentals, especially in our cities and suburbs.
‘It makes finding housing more difficult for everyone. We have a more substantial, more sustainable approach.’
Dr. Chalmers announced that universities would have to build more housing for international students if they wanted to continue to rely on their upfront costs for a lucrative revenue stream.
With construction workers in short supply, it is hoped that forcing universities to build more accommodation will make it harder for the higher education sector to accept so many enrolments.
International students make up the bulk of long-term arrivals in immigration figures, with permanent migrant inflows capped at 190,000.
“If universities want to take on more international students, they need to build more student housing,” Dr Chalmers said.
“We will limit how many international students can be enrolled per university based on a formula, including the amount of housing they build.”
From July, Labor wants 1.2 million homes built over five years, but only 168,690 new homes were built last year – a level well below the 240,000 per year needed to meet the fastest growing population since the beginning of the 1950s.
Labor pledges to halve immigration levels within a year and tackle the rental crisis by forcing universities to build more international student accommodation
The government is also cracking down on the quality standards of vocational education providers by ensuring that 70 percent of international graduates are employed after graduating in 2024/2025.
Education is Australia’s largest service export and the third largest overall, after coal, iron ore and natural gas.
Labor is also scrapping the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, which has seen asylum seekers use the legal system to obtain permanent residency.
It is establishing a new Administrative Review Tribunal to replace the AAT ‘to address backlogs in the courts related to the large number of applications for judicial review of migration decisions’.