2026-04-23
Who Gets a Home? Inside the Greens’ Housing Inquiry into Intergenerational Housing Inequality
By Senator Barbara Pocock
We are in an intergenerational housing crisis. Just ask anyone who is struggling to get a roof over their head, any renter, and any of the growing number of people who are without homes. Like the many living in tents not far from my home, here in Adelaide. It didn't use to be like this and doesn't have to be now.
The Australian housing crisis has emerged as the defining political touchpoint of our time. Yet, while the media has latched on, we are seeing a response from Labor that is actually making things worse. Hard to believe. Hard to watch. And very hard to experience.
Every day we see new data showing house prices skyrocketing, land values ballooning out of control, and the story of another young person being turned away on auction day as an investor swoops up their seventh property.
In every state, rents are spiralling out of control, rising high interest rates loom over the heads of mortgage holders and despondent first home buyers lament unaffordable property prices as the waiting list for public housing grows. Incredibly, homelessness has grown by 10% under Labor.
Australia’s housing crisis is deepening and you don’t need to be reading the news to feel it. In fact, all you need to do is have a chat with anyone born before the 1980s to understand that it hasn’t always been this way, that you didn’t always have to rely on having rich parents just to have a roof over your head.
The Australian housing crisis in 2026 is marked by an intense feeling of inequity, a cruel reminder that in this day, to get safe and secure housing in the ‘lucky country’, you really do need to just be lucky in your parents.
The Greens know there is a different way to do housing, and before us is an opportunity to reform housing policy so that we have a system shaped by fairness, not luck and intergenerational wealth.
It’s for these reasons that the Greens have proposed and are leading a new Senate Inquiry into intergenerational housing inequality which will investigate why Australia has created a housing system where housing has become a vehicle for wealth accumulation rather than a roof over your head.
Over the course of the next six months, the inquiry committee will conduct public hearings in every city and some regions around Australia and will receive submissions from individuals, experts and organisations in order to inform recommendations that directly address the root causes of the housing crisis.
Add your voice
Submissions are a critical component of understanding the housing landscape in Australia and the Greens welcome all voices and experiences to expand this understanding.
There are two ways you can add your voice to the national discussion on the housing crisis.
- Submit evidence of your housing experience via the official Senate Inquiry website. The Senate Inquiry is accepting submissions (until May 1st, 2026). These submissions must follow submission guidelines and will be used to inform the final report of the Inquiry.
- Submit your housing story directly with our Greens team. These stories will be used by the Greens to tell real stories of housing inequality. We want to show Australia all the ways in which the housing crisis is impacting everyday people across the country. (If you do not wish for your story or name to be used, just select the option for your name to be withheld.)
A crisis decades in the making
Australia’s housing affordability problem is not new but the scale of inequality we see now is extraordinary. This is the direct result of successive decades of policy from both the major parties that prioritise wealth accumulation over basic needs. What we are left with is millions of Australians facing mortgage and rental stress amid a broader cost-of-living crisis. For younger people in particular, the prospect of home ownership has shifted from expectation to improbability. Now is the perfect time to launch an inquiry into housing, so we can begin to push solutions that will actually work - rather than more of the same from Labor that makes the problem worse rather than fixing it.
How will an inquiry help?
The recommendations in the final inquiry report will provide robust, evidence-based ideas that address the core issues of the housing crisis. Things can be different, and we have to find and win a better way forward.
Inquiries won’t win this issue. But they can help build understanding of the problem and create ambition for real solutions. Senator McKim’s inquiry into the inequity of the capital gains tax discount is a case in point: It found the tax break skews home ownership towards wealthy property investors and distorts productive investment.
The inquiry showed that the capital gains tax discount is an unfair tax break that favours property speculators and is turbocharging the housing crisis. The Labor party is now looking at reforming the tax discount before the next budget. Inquiries create momentum towards results.
The Greens-led inquiry into intergenerational housing inequality is an opportunity to shine a light on how the major parties have cooked housing, by design, over the past 30 years and to signpost solutions that address the intergenerational crisis in housing that we are witnessing in every corner of our country.