WA housing crisis 91 per cent worse in two years: Report

West Australian

11-06-2025

New research has revealed a grim reality for hundreds of thousands of households in the grip of a severe housing crisis that has only intensified in the past two years.
The Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre found 210,000 West Australian households now believed their housing to be unaffordable, an increase of 91 per cent since 2023.
The severity of the crisis was laid bare in a new report titled Housing Affordability in Western Australia 2025, using fresh insights from the Australian Housing Conditions Data Infrastructure Survey.
The report found only 39 per cent of renters and 48 per cent of mortgage holders in WA considered their housing affordable.
Researchers revealed the state's housing market was under intense pressure from rapid population growth, slow housing supply, soaring rents and construction delays, with no immediate end to the crisis in sight.
With 119,000 new residents since 2023, demand for housing had surged way past supply.
WA recorded a shortfall of 4000 new homes despite more than 20,000 homes being completed last year, the most since 2017.
Building times in WA were the highest in the country taking more than 15 months to complete a house, adding $100,000 to the price of a new home.
A growing discrepancy between key worker wages and housing costs meant most single-income workers such as nurses, police officers and firefighters were priced out of home ownership in many parts of Perth.
As the population grew by 4.2 per cent, only 694 new rental properties were added to the market between March 2023 and September 2024.
Rentals were also in short supply with a lack of 7700 homes, pushing rents up 76 per cent in the past five years and tenants out to the fringes of the metro area adding stress, complexity and extra costs to their lives.
The dire situation worsened housing stress particularly for renters on low or single incomes.
Researchers found persistent shortfalls in housing and chronic underinvestment in social housing had strained support services and exposed failures in WA's housing system.
'This report shows that homelessness in WA is becoming more widespread and more entrenched,' the report stated.
Homelessness increased by 8 per cent and rough sleeping more than doubled since 2016, while 25,000 people sought homelessness services last financial year.
The report made 33 policy recommendations to improve the state's housing affordability saying while the state government had taken steps to prioritise housing, the unprecedented scale of the challenge called for a co-ordinated response from all sectors.
BCEC director Alan Duncan said housing was no longer just an economic issue but a breakdown in the ability of WA's housing system to meet the needs of ordinary West Australians.
'We're building more homes, but it's not enough to meet demand,' he said.
'Housing costs continue to rise faster than incomes and what's being built often isn't where people want or need to live.'
'Despite some signs of a softening housing market, there has been an accumulation of pressure on households from years of high housing costs, low rental vacancies and an inadequate supply of new stock.
'These challenges risk slowing the state's economic development and continue to affect the most financially vulnerable people in our community.
'As affordable homes vanish from inner and middle suburbs, low and moderate-income renters are being pushed to the outer edges of the city where jobs and services are scarcer.
'This is reshaping the social map of our State and deepening inequality.'
Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute director Steven Rowley said cost pressures had pushed more and more families into a housing crisis.
Professor Rowley said there had been a 330 per cent growth in priority social housing cases since 2018, with 6300 of those in greatest need waiting to be homed.
While he welcomed the government's commitment to increase social housing stock adding 1700 units in two years, he said much more needed to be done.
'We need around 16,000 more social housing units to raise WA's social housing provision to around 5 per cent of total stock, roughly equivalent to levels in NSW and SA,' he said.
'WA's social housing waitlist has grown to 20,700, an increase of more than a third in five years.'