Briefs

Recent interim findings from the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety have led to the Australian Government increasing the number of home care packages by 10,000. The home care packages aim to help older Australians ‘age in place’—in December 2018, 93,331 people were receiving a home care package to help with their day-to-day living, while (in March 2019) another 75,739 people were waiting for a home care package.

The housing aspirations and desires of young adults (aged 25–34) and older Australians who have retired (aged 65–74) are framed around quite different housing and employment experiences and long-term goals. Two recent AHURI reports have  looked at the housing aspirations of younger and older Australians and found some similarity in housing preferences despite the large age gap between the groups.

The importance of financial assistance for Australian households on low incomes who are renting in the private rental market is apparent when we consider that of the 1.31 million income units who received Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA) in 2018, 68 per cent would have been in housing affordability stress if they hadn’t received the subsidy.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics 2016 Personal Safety Survey revealed that, across Australia, 1700 women per 100,000 had experienced physical and/or sexual violence from a current or previous cohabiting partner some time during the previous 12 months. For men, the rate was 800 per 100,000.

The wealth portfolios of older retired mortgagors (i.e. aged over 55 years) is dominated by holdings in property—both the family home and investment properties—(an average of $934,000 or 59.2% of all assets) and superannuation ($433,000 or 27.4%). The family home accounts for, on mean average, $663,000 or 42.0 per cent of all assets.