Emotional dad calls out key issue after $9,360 ask forces family out of Sydney: ‘More money than I can get'

Yahoo

10-03-2025

An Australian dad struggling to keep up with the rising cost of rent has pleaded with the government to do something about the housing crisis. Morgan Cox has just been hit with a $180 per week increase in his rent, which works out to be $9,360 per year.
His increasing weekly rent has even forced him to move out of Sydney for a cheaper life, but that still hasn't given much reprieve. He wants something done now to ensure he and his family don't end up on the street.
"I tried to find a cheaper place and there just aren't any with what little is available," he said on the ABC's QandA programme.
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"There's dozens of people lined up. Lots of them are immigrants, and they have plenty more money than I can possibly get.
"One more rent increase and my family, my one-year-old baby, we're facing homelessness, and we've got nowhere to go.
"Is the government going to cut immigration to match housing availability, or are we just going to keep going until every regular working Australian is homeless?"
Cox said he's already working two jobs to make ends meet, but it's still difficult to find any financial breathing room.Federal Health Minister Mark Butler was the first to respond to the dad's desperate plea and said the solution to his problem was simple, but hard at the same time.
"We do want to see those migration numbers get back to something like normal for Australia," he said.
"We also know that migration has been an important part of keeping our economy going... we also have a very tight labour market with lots of skill shortages.
"So it is a fine balance [that] governments of all political persuasions always have to try to strike.
"But we need more houses... like we just need to get building more houses."
There was a record overseas migration intake in 2022-23, with 528,000 people coming into Australia, according to Treasury figures.
But Treasury forecast that number to plummet to 260,000 for the 2024-25 year, and hover around the 235,000 per annum mark after that.
The government announced last year that the permanent migration program would be capped at 185,000 places in 2024-25 and that $18.3 million would be invested to reform the country's immigration system to 'drive greater economic prosperity and restore its integrity'.
Former NSW Treasurer Matt Kean said fixing housing supply will come by addressing the way we build.
"A lever that [governments] could pull is making it easier in our planning system to get stuff built," he said.
"Because there's way too much red tape and green tape that is stopping housing developments, whether it be Sydney, Melbourne or right across Australia."
Veteran builder Scott Challen has previously told Yahoo Finance that regulatory approvals have crippled the building and construction industry because it's causing projects to take far longer than normal.
'This is the biggest, biggest, biggest anchor that's hanging off the building industry at the moment. We literally cannot get anything approved," he said.
"We've created so much regulation and legislation around getting anything approved through our local councils that the industry is pretty much gridlocked.
'So, it wouldn't matter if we wanted to build it, we can't build it.'
He claimed to have jobs on the books that have been stuck in the approvals process for a year.
'You can imagine what the price was 12 months ago compared to now, riding the wave of shortage with that as well,' he said.
'It's a perfect storm. A lot of these companies might just haven't had the cash flow to be able to move forward because they can't build anything anyway.'
Fixing supply and addressing red tape will likely take years, which will do little for Cox and others like him, who admitted that every day is a struggle.
Recent PropTrack figures revealed that rental affordability is the worst it's been in nearly 20 years.
A household earning a median income of $116,000 could only afford 36 per cent of the advertised rental properties between July to December last year.
Lower-income households earning $70,000 could only afford just 2 per cent of homes.
'The current alarming state of rental affordability is a substantial deterioration from conditions before and during the pandemic,' PropTrack senior economist and report author Angus Moore said.
'For lower-income households, renting is essentially impossible.
'This highlights just how crucial Commonwealth Rent Assistance and community housing is for lower-income Australian households.'
PropTrack found NSW was the most unaffordable state to rent in, followed by South Australia and Tasmania, with Victoria the cheapest.Sign in to access your portfolio