Introduction
In the contemporary period, in most advanced economies, there is an increasing division between older people (defined in this study as people aged 65 and above) who have the resources to choose their housing and lifestyle and those who have minimal capacity to control their everyday lives and housing situations (Clapham, Reference Clapham2002, Reference Clapham2003; Phillipson, Reference Phillipson2007). For older home owners, their home is generally a source of comfort and security (Saunders, Reference Saunders1990). This is especially so if it represents a repository of positive memories (Gurney and Means, Reference Gurney, Means, Arber and Evandrou1993; Sixsmith and Sixsmith, Reference Sixsmith and Sixsmith2008). Older people in these situations are in their ‘comfort zone’ and feel a sense of belonging. Their home is a solid asset and usually ensures that their housing costs remain low and manageable.
In most OECD countries, there were strong increases in home ownership rates between 1945 and the early 1990s (Atterhog, Reference Atterhog, Doling and Elsinga2006). However, over the last decade home ownership rates have declined in some nation states. For example, in the UK home ownership reached a high of just over 70 per cent in 2003, but has since slipped to 67.3 per cent (Heywood, Reference Heywood2011). This decline has been accompanied by a dramatic contraction in social housing (Whitehead and Scanlon, Reference Whitehead, Scanlon, Whitehead and Scanlon2007), and a rapid rise in the proportion of UK households dependent on the private rental market – from 7 per cent in 1990 to 15.6 per cent in 2010 (O'Sullivan and De Decker, Reference O'Sullivan and De Decker2007; Heywood, Reference Heywood2011). If current trends continue, it is projected that by 2025 only 60 per cent of UK households will be home owners and 20 per cent will be dependent on the private rental market (Heywood, Reference Heywood2011).
With regard to regulation, the private rental market in the UK and Australia is similar; there is minimal regulation and landlords are entitled to charge whatever the market can bear. In both countries, this has had serious implications for private renters. A recent report by Shelter UK concluded that in 55 per cent of local authorities rents in the private rental market were unaffordable; the rent was more than 35 per cent of median take home pay in that area (Shelter, 2011). In Australia, in 2007–08, 47.5 per cent of low-income households (defined as those households in the bottom 40 per cent with regard to income) in the private rental market were having to use more than 30 per cent of their income to pay for accommodation (Shelter, New South Wales, 2011).
A qualitative exploration of older Australians’ trajectory into the private rental market is the focus of this article. Besides the limited availability or undesirability of social housing, for some older people their employment histories play a fundamental role in shaping their housing choices in later life (Forrest and Kemeny, Reference Forrest and Kemeny1984). A history of patchy employment in low-paying jobs would usually ensure that home ownership was never an option. Gender and marital status are also important. Many older women have had an inconsistent employment history and minimal formal skill training. If they are divorced, separated or widowed, they are more likely to be dependent on the private rental market in their retirement (Coleman and Watson, Reference Coleman and Watson1987). In Australia, the marital status of older people does appear to play a role in determining housing tenure. In the sixty-five- to seventy-four-year-old age group, nearly 90 per cent of couples were outright homeowners, compared to 70 per cent of widows and about 55 per cent for people who were divorced or separated (Beer and Faulkner, Reference Beer and Faulkner2009: 115). About 43 per cent of divorced or separated people in the sixty-five- to seventy-four-year-old age group were renting (Beer and Faulkner, Reference Beer and Faulkner2009). It is important to acknowledge that divorce can also have devastating consequences for men, and on occasion they will lose the family home and be forced into the private rental market (Babacan et al., Reference Babacan, Chamberlain, Cullen, Dockery, Stoakes and Wood2006).
Prior to the qualitative exploration of the trajectory of older private renters, the policy context which has created the conditions for an increasing proportion of older Australians finding themselves in the private rental market is outlined. The methodology for the study is then sketched. The article then explores the various reasons for older people finding themselves in the private rental market in their retirement years. Despite housing tenure being a fundamental determinant of the fortunes of older people, we know very little about the housing histories of older Australians who are dependent on the private rental market. Housing histories in Australia have been explored using questionnaire surveys and existing data sets (Kendig, Reference Kendig1984; Winter and Stone, Reference Winter and Stone1998; Beer and Faulkner, Reference Beer and Faulkner2009). The study by Beer and Faulkner included qualitative interviews with persons aged twenty-five to thirty-four and persons aged fifty-five to sixty-four. There have been no qualitative Australian studies of the housing histories of persons aged sixty-five plus.
Changes in Australia's housing policy and the situation of older private renters
Historically, older Australians have had one of the highest rates of home ownership in the OECD (Yates and Bradbury, Reference Yates and Bradbury2010). The high level of home ownership is premised on the long-standing and overwhelming perception within the Australian population that home ownership is the housing option that everybody should aspire to (Kemeny, Reference Kemeny1977; Kendig, Reference Kendig1984). There was a realisation in the populace that the low government pension age meant that it was crucial that home ownership be attained so as to minimise financial hardship during retirement (Kemeny, Reference Kemeny1977). The private rental market was viewed as a housing tenure linked to a stage in the life cycle, the early years of marriage, when funds were to be accumulated for a deposit on a home (Kendig, Reference Kendig1984).
The desire for home ownership has also been driven by the small size of the public housing sector, which has never exceeded 6 per cent of the total housing stock. When the Labor Party regained power in 1983, the realisation that a growing proportion of low-income households could not afford to purchase a home or access the private rental market provoked a major expansion of public housing (McIntosh, Reference McIntosh1997). However, the renewed enthusiasm for public housing was short-lived and the early 1990s heralded a major policy shift. The cost of the public housing building program, its failure to make a substantial dent in the waiting list and the dominance of a neo-liberal perspective that viewed the market as a better solution, led the federal government to rethink its housing policy for low-income households (Marston, Reference Marston2004; McIntosh, Reference McIntosh1997). The emphasis shifted to helping low-income households enter the private rental market.
For low-income households access to the private rental market was facilitated by the federal government substantially increasing the scope of Commonwealth Rent Assistance. The programme allows low-income households to claim rent assistance if they are private renters. From the early 1990s, the amount of rent assistance individuals and families could claim increased substantially and the eligibility criteria were revised so that more households were entitled to claim (Johnston, Reference Johnston2002).
In 1995, in his last year in office, the then Labor Party prime minister, Paul Keating, summed up this new approach when he stated that the government's policy should be to ‘Reduce public housing waiting lists by improving the scope for people to choose private rental accommodation’ (in Wilkinson, Reference Wilkinson2005).
The coming into power of the Conservative Coalition government in 1996 signalled a further undermining of public housing. Using 2003 dollars, between 1993–94 and 2003–04 funding for public housing decreased by 54 per cent in real terms (ACOSS and National Shelter, 2003: 8). Social housingFootnote 1 now constitutes only 4.9 per cent of Australia's housing stock, down from 5.6 per cent at the beginning of the decade (Atkinson and Jacobs, Reference Atkinson and Jacobs2008; Parnell, Reference Parnell2008).
The neglect of social housing has meant that it has become extremely difficult to access and has forced older non-homeowners into the expensive private rental market. The key problem for older private renters is the cost of their accommodation relative to their income. In 2006, older homeowners who owned their home outright spent 4 per cent of their income on housing, whilst older private renters spent on average 33 per cent: ‘Older private renters spent the highest proportion of their income on housing costs compared with households of any age group or tenure type’ (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2007: 15). In June 2006, about 155,000 older Australians were in the private rental market and half were in ‘housing stress’, that is they were using more than 30 per cent of their income for accommodation, and for 22.9 per cent their rent accounted for at least half of their income (ABS, 2008). About a third of older private renters had an income of $350 or less a week. It is likely that this grouping was constituted by older people living by themselves whose sole source of income was the age pension and Commonwealth Rent Assistance.Footnote 2 Half of this grouping was using more than 50 per cent of their income for rent.
Methodology
The data are drawn primarily from eighteen in-depth interviews conducted between 2005 and 2008. Interviewees were recruited through advertisements placed in seniors’ publications and through word of mouth. The Older Persons Tenancy Organisation also helped recruit participants. The interviewing technique was influenced by the biographical approach adopted to establish housing histories (Clapham et al., Reference Clapham, Means, Munro, Arber and Evandrou1993). Interviewees were asked about the key events in their lives which led to them being dependent on the private rental market in their retirement. This approach is premised on the notion that an individual's present housing situation is fundamentally shaped by their previous housing, employment and biographical history, and overlaps with what has been called a housing history approach. The premise for this approach is outlined by Gearing and Dant (Reference Gearing, Dant and Pearce1990: 144).
By identifying main strands in a life (‘careers’), how they have shaped and been shaped by significant biographical events (family, upbringing, marriage, work, parenthood, retirement, widowhood, and so on), we will better understand the way the individual concerned experiences ‘old age’ and his/her present needs, satisfactions and problems.
Of the eighteen interviewees, seventeen were resident in Sydney and one in regional New South Wales. All of the interviewees were primarily or solely dependent on the age pension for their income. Eight of the interviewees were between sixty-five and sixty-nine and ten between seventy and seventy-four; eleven were female and seven were male. Except for one couple, all of the interviewees were either widowed, divorced or never married, and were living by themselves. This is significant as it meant that their incomes were low. All of the interviewees were mainly or solely dependent on the age pension and Commonwealth Rent Assistance for their income. The rent of the couple interviewed was subsidised by their daughter and one interviewee had their rent subsidised by a friend. Not surprisingly, this had a very positive impact on their respective situations.
Becoming an older private renter
The trajectory of interviewees into the private rental market was usually due to a combination of factors. A central structural factor was an inability to access social housing. Poor labour market participation throughout the life-course was also a common feature. Divorce and death of a partner were common experiences and had serious financial implications, propelling some interviewees from homeowner status to private renter. A sudden end to labour market participation due to ill-health was a disaster for some of the interviewees. The factors identified are discussed in turn.
An inability to access social housing
Housing careers are structured by ‘historical time . . . the prevailing economic, social and political conditions’ (Clapham et al., Reference Clapham, Means, Munro, Arber and Evandrou1993: 143). A key aspect of the historical time for the interviewees in this study is the neo-liberal economic and policy context that has contributed to a substantial decline in investment in public housing over the last two decades, notwithstanding the one-off boost in response to the global financial crisis in 2008. In Victoria, at a recent Parliamentary inquiry into the adequacy of public housing, the Manager of the advocacy organisation, Council on the Ageing, told of older people who had been on the waiting list for twenty or even thirty years (Victorian Government, 2010). The non-availability of adequate social housing was a fundamental reason for interviewees being in the private rental market. Although there were interviewees who would not consider social housing, the majority were desperate to access it providing it was adequate and safe. They had put their names on the waiting list but had no expectation that their application would be successful. The story of Nadine (seventy) is typical. She had been living in a mobile home a couple of hours from Sydney but had decided to come back to Sydney to be near her son and grandson.
Here I am, not wanting to live in a caravan, and not being able to afford the rent [in private rental] because it's taking my money. It's eating into any bit of capital I have and I have put my name down for public housing. I've been accepted for public housing, but of course the waiting list is huge, huge . . . Because you have the choice of going to have your name on the list for public housing, but it's not a choice because it's a twelve-year waiting list.
Another interviewee (George, sixty-seven) had had a hip replacement and declared himself bankrupt, but it still was not enough to get him into social housing:
But it's . . . paramount that I find cheaper accommodation. But the availability – I have been to Public Housing, and Community Housing and the waiting list is enormous. Housing wrote back to me after I applied for, after I went into bankruptcy, and I looked to be put on a priority list, and they declined that and said that I could find my own rental.
Many of the private renters interviewed had concluded that they would never be able to access social housing. Clare (seventy) had been on the waiting list for ten years:
Well the housing . . . it's just a joke. What was happening with me with the Housing [Department] when I'd get desperate I'd go down there and I'd approach them and I'd get . . . a little upstart on the other side of the counter that couldn't have given a damn and their attitude was just so bad cos they don't understand and couldn't care less.
Tony (seventy-four), a retired bus-driver, had a similar story:
I've been on a list now for about seven years and I'm still waiting for a house . . . The last time I was out there [Department of Housing] they were telling me about ten years. I said, ‘Thank you very much.’ I tried to put my name down before I retired and I had to take them in a statement about how much money I was earning, and they said, ‘No, you cannot get on the Department of Housing list because you're earning too much money.’ I said, ‘I want to put my name down now so that I can have a house when I retire because when I retire I won't be able to [rent privately], I'll be dropping down from about $450 a week down to about $250 a week and that's a big drop.’ And they said, ‘No there's nothing we can do about that. That's a government rule.’
For one interviewee the non-availability of social housing meant that he had to leave Sydney and relocate to a remote village three hours from Sydney. Dan's (seventy) story is particularly poignant. He nursed his severely disabled partner for the last ten years of her life, they had been together for nearly forty years, and after she died he was asked to pay a market rent by the homeowner, his late partner's daughter. This was not possible and he had had no option but to start looking for alternative accommodation. This turned out to be an impossible task.
I looked around and I even went to places [that had] rooms to rent . . . They started from $165. You wouldn't have stayed there one night they were that bad . . . and so depressing. I just had to get out immediately.
His requests to the State Housing Authority for assistance were fruitless:
I went to the Department of Housing and I was sitting in there and they said, ‘Where would you like to go?’ ‘Well’, I said, ‘you're not offering me anything in Sydney.’ I said, ‘I can understand that because of the accommodation how hard it is’, and they said, ‘Where would you like to go?’ I didn't really know. I said, ‘Wagga [Wagga is about 500 kilometres from Sydney] or anything you know.’ But they . . . they could not offer me anything . . . I can understand now how they [people] end up on the streets.
The stress of his situation led to him collapsing and being hospitalised. Ultimately, he concluded that there was no possibility of him finding affordable and adequate accommodation in Sydney and he decided to accept an offer of social housing in a village of about 500 people three hours from Sydney.
Financial hardship and inability to purchase a home
All of the interviewees were primarily or solely dependent on the age pension and purchasing a home was not a possibility. Some had modest savings, but many had no savings. For some of the interviewees, financial hardship and unsatisfactory labour market participation had been a persistent feature of their lives and they had never been in a position to purchase a home. Their employment histories emerged as a key factor in their trajectory into the private rental market (Forrest and Murie, Reference Forrest, Murie, Allan and Hamnett1991). Tony's (seventy-four) tale was not unusual.
I've never had enough money to buy a house . . . I would have liked to have owned my own house naturally, but I've never been able to sort of save up enough money . . . I've always been sort of battling and struggling on. I couldn't get any education at all because Mum was on her own and she was struggling really bad so as soon as I turned fifteen I was virtually out of school to get a job to try and get some money into the house sort of thing . . . So I've virtually never been able to save enough money to buy a house.
Mark (sixty-eight) had a similar narrative; he had never had the means to purchase a home. He blamed his lack of qualifications and failure to have steady employment on his birth-date and his parents:
I was born in 1939 . . . My parents were products of pre-war and particularly the depression. They impressed upon you to get a secure job . . . and my secure job which I went into three days after I did the final exams in the School Leaving Certificate was a bank. And I'm about as suited to a bank as an Eskimo [sic] would be and I lasted seven months. And unfortunately that put me on a trail of sort of going from job to job . . .
For other interviewees a change of financial circumstances had occurred in later life and was unexpected. Some of the interviewees had been homeowners and had lost their homes due to a range of circumstances – loss of savings, business failure, divorce and death of husband were the key reasons. Grace (sixty-five) had owned her own home. After she sold it, she invested almost all of the proceeds in the insurance giant, HIH, which was considered a blue chip company. The unexpected collapse of HIH left her with very little:
We had a country hotel. When I sold that, I had so much money. Then when I sold the house I just said, ‘I'm going to rent.’ Unfortunately, most of my money went down when HIH went down . . . I put all my money in . . . I said, ‘I'll leave it there for a month’, and in that month it collapsed.
It is noteworthy that the move from homeowner to renter for an older individual is not unusual in Australia. A nationwide survey conducted in 2006 found that 82 per cent of renters over fifty-five had previously been homeowners (Beer and Faulkner, Reference Beer and Faulkner2009: 112).
Divorce, separation and widowhood
The higher levels of divorce and separation mean that an increasing number of Australians are living on their own in retirement. In 2006, 10.2 per cent of sixty-five- to seventy-four-year-olds were divorced, 2.9 per cent were separated and 4.9 per cent were never married. In addition, 14.9 per cent of sixty-five- to seventy-four-year-olds were widowed (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2007). Thus, overall, close to one in three sixty-five- to seventy-four-year-olds were not partnered. As mentioned, the chances of being dependent on the private rental market are far greater for older Australians if they live by themselves (Babacan et al., Reference Babacan, Chamberlain, Cullen, Dockery, Stoakes and Wood2006; Faulkner, Reference Faulkner2007; Beer and Faulkner, Reference Beer and Faulkner2009).
In the interviews, divorce and widowhood were often cited as the key factors precipitating a move into the private rental market. Women who had been divorced or separated were in a particularly vulnerable situation. Nadine and her family had always struggled and had never been able to purchase a home. When she was in her forties, her husband left her. This appeared to seal her fate – she was destined to be a perpetual private renter:
I mean my husband didn't have a great job. We managed. He was just on the basic wage, and I didn't work . . . I wasn't trained for anything . . . because again I hadn't gone through any schooling because I'm a World War 2 girl . . . Consequently, well we never did have anything really . . . and when my husband did work his way up, later on in the fifties, of course I still wasn't educated, and I had teenage children and he met someone that was educated, a younger person, and . . . went off to start a new family.
Once her husband left, she was forced to work. Her lack of qualifications meant that she was confined to low-paid jobs and was not able to accumulate much superannuation. Also, she started working at a relatively late age:
I worked with the ambulance service, but I retired quite a few years ago, health reasons and old age . . . and I had only a very small amount of superannuation. I had $6,000, because in my era women didn't work. Men didn't want their women to work, so you stayed at home and reared the children, and there was no such thing as superannuation. And as you got older, you went on the pension . . . and of course then it changed, but I was then in my fifties. And so for me, I sort of fell through the cracks.
The housing history of Sarah (sixty-eight) also captures the impact of gender, divorce, lack of skills and minimal employment history:
I was married and we bought a house, and unfortunately that marriage didn't last . . . I think we'd only had it [the house] about five years and we lost it. Financially, [after the divorce] it wasn't viable for me to keep it, so we had to sell it. The money received from that wasn't enough for me to go and buy another place because I wasn't working . . . I was in my forties, I wasn't educated . . . I couldn't get full-time work . . . I left school at fourteen and . . . I wasn't really skilled to demand a decent wage.
Divorce can also be devastating financially for men. George lost his home when he divorced and at the time of the interview had been renting for about twenty years.
Well I did have my own house, but the divorce took everything. And so that's the situation. It wasn't planned and then I hadn't been able to get back into the [housing] market again.
When he was working, being a private renter was not a concern but once he was retrenched after an operation, he soon found himself in desperate financial straits. The operation stripped him of his savings:
All my savings and meagre superannuation [were used], even though I had top health cover, there was a shortfall of over $8,000.
Stephen (sixty-five) lost the family home after his divorce:
I've been renting . . . ever since my wife threw me out . . . Well I was well into my thirties before I got married and I was married for twenty-two or twenty-three years and she gave me the flick and took just about everything . . . I had about a quarter of a million mortgage on my house. She sold that for around about $350,000 so she walked out with $100,000 cash.
Prior to the divorce his small business had gone into liquidation. Subsequently, he was not able to find employment and had experienced primary homelessness. At the time of the interview, he was moving from boarding house to boarding house.
The death of a spouse can have a devastating impact. For some of the interviewees, it meant a slow relinquishing of home ownership and a move into the private rental sector. When Clare (seventy) was sixty, her husband died. They had been homeowners and had ‘always lived well’. At the time of his death, his business had gone into liquidation. She had never worked during their marriage.
It is stressful to me because I've always been used to a home and that was the worst part. Yeah, that's the worst part. You haven't got a roof over your head . . . My husband . . . suicided . . . ten years ago when everybody went to the wall . . .That's the reason [why I'm in private rental] and it's always been very foreign to me. As soon as we could, we went out and bought and I never wanted to rent in my life . . .
Ill-health
Ill-health has a range of potential ramifications for the individual including an inability to work and resultant loss of income. George had lost his house when he got divorced but was saving to buy another home when he was made redundant. A couple of months later he had a heart attack. His ill-health ensured that he was confined to the private rental market.
And I thought I'll work out my days with the company that I was with for fourteen years and [make] a reasonable living, put enough away and I certainly was looking at buying then, but you know, [the company] going into liquidation then on Christmas Eve 1994. February 1995 I had a heart attack. So everything just blew up.
Jennifer (sixty-eight) and her husband ran hotels and had never owned a home, but they were financially comfortable. Their situation deteriorated dramatically once her husband died and her health deteriorated:
Well we . . . were leasing hotels and motels and then he had a coronary . . . and eventually the money that we had saved had gone and his later part of his life he had to go onto the pension because he had bypasses and things like that . . . And after he died . . . I was doing refinancing of properties and things like that and I did that for a while, but then when my vision started to go, I had to give that away, and then I got onto the blind pension.
Conclusion
In all contexts, older people who are located in affordable and adequate housing are far more likely to be able to lead a life which they value (Morris, Reference Morris2009a). However, what this article has shown is that the older private renters interviewed did not have the option of choosing a housing situation which was affordable and secure. There were some common dynamics in the trajectories of the interviewees. Many of the interviewees had struggled financially throughout their adult lives and had never been in a position to purchase their own home; their current housing circumstances were fundamentally shaped by their previous employment history. All interviewees, except for one couple, were either divorced or widowed and living by themselves. A critical factor which impinged on all of the older private renters interviewed was the lack of affordable and appropriate social housing. Most had endeavoured to access social housing but had not been able to.
For some of the interviewees, their marginality and dependence on the private rental market was relatively recent. For much of their adult lives they had been homeowners and their financial situation did not evoke anxiety. A life-changing event, divorce, ill-health, bankruptcy or death of a spouse, or a combination of these events, precipitated a spiral of decline. What the interviews illustrate is that financial decline and the resultant trajectory into the private rental market can happen in later life and is not necessarily gradual or predictable.
The interviews suggest that housing histories are often complex and disrupted and downward movement is possible. A key issue is that once older people find themselves in the private rental market involuntarily, they are usually in a constant situation of financial hardship and precariousness and may be forced to move even though they do not have the emotional, physical or financial resources. As Forrest and Kemeny (Reference Forrest and Kemeny1984) conclude, ‘In certain circumstances some kinds of [housing] careers may be little more than a series of coping strategies, during which the individual moves from one crisis to another.’ For many of the interviewees, the lack of affordable accommodation meant that their lives were characterised by constant stress as they battled to sustain themselves and meet unexpected expenses. They were also subject to the whims of their landlord once their written agreement (usually six or twelve months) ended.
As long as there is no affordable housing alternative, this situation will continue to prevail. Urban marginality subverts the postmodern notion that older people in advanced economies are able to construct their own lives and lifestyles. The older private renters interviewed were living day-by-day and their main focus was ‘getting by’.
The key policy issue that emerges is that a greater quantity of adequate, secure and affordable housing is urgently required. The global financial crisis precipitated a change in the government's housing policy, and as part of the stimulus package in February 2009, $AU6.3 billion was allocated for the building of 19,300 social housing homes. This initiative certainly was welcome but the massive shortfall of affordable housing means that the initiative's impact was necessarily limited. The National Housing Supply Council has estimated that even with medium population growth an additional 220,000 social housing dwellings will be required by 2028 (National Housing Supply Council, 2011). There has also been an attempt to address the affordability crisis in the private rental market through the implementation of the $AU4.3 billion National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS). The scheme involves government giving investors a subsidy over ten years in exchange for the latter renting their apartments out at 20 per cent below market value. The aim is to have 50,000 units built through the NRAS by 2016. A key problem with the NRAS is that even with the 20 per cent discount, most older private renters in the metropolitan areas will not be able to afford the rents demanded (Morris, Reference Morris2009b). The NRAS does provide a potential model for increasing the supply of affordable housing. An increase in the government subsidy might perhaps provide greater incentives for both investors and potential renters. In the context of a major shortage of affordable accommodation in the private rental market, there needs to be a reassessment of how Commonwealth Rent Assistance is calculated. At present, the maximum amount is uniform across the nation despite substantial differences in the strength of the private rental market. There is also plenty of scope for the government to improve the security of tenants. Most leases (written agreements) are for a maximum of twelve months, and once the lease ends the landlord is entitled to raise the rent to whatever the market can bear.
It is important that we do not only focus on the older cohort. Access to home ownership is premised on the notion that the household will have a regular and adequate income which will allow them to enter the housing market. For an increasing proportion of households in Australia and other OECD countries, this is no longer the case and home ownership is out of reach for the foreseeable future or possibly for their lifetime (Yates and Bradbury, Reference Yates and Bradbury2010). Their labour market participation is too intermittent and part-time and renting in the private rental market for these households is no longer a stage in the life-cycle but a permanent reality. This is perhaps tolerable when there is still the possibility of labour market participation, but, as the article has illustrated, this becomes untenable in retirement when labour market participation is no longer a possibility. What is required is far more discussion and action around housing affordability so that all households are able to access affordable housing regardless of their labour market participation. If this is not done, the coming decades will be characterised by an ever-increasing proportion of older Australians being dependent on the inhospitable private rental market.
