Rent assistance plan to ease the strain

RENT assistance could be increased more than 15 per cent in a bid to get more people out of social housing and into competitive rental markets, under a Productivity Commission proposal.

Payments could also be made to enable welfare beneficiaries to live in a high cost area, such as the inner city, if a need is demonstrated, such as to be closer to a particular school.

The government’s peak review body will today deliver a draft report which includes a focus on social housing, palliative care and health services.

The commission labels social housing a “broken” system.

Recommendations include extending rent assistance to cover all public housing tenants and increasing and index- ing it to reflect changes in rental prices nationally.

The maximum rent assistance paid is $175.42 weekly.

About 400,000 households live in social housing and one million are on a waiting list.

A total of 1.3 million households receive rental assistance, costing $4.4 billion a year.

“An overhaul is needed to create a fairer, more flexible system so people who are eli- gible for housing assistance have greater choice over where they live,” Productivity Commissioner Stephen King said.

Menzies Research Centre executive director Nick Cater said he could see benefits but it could be a disincentive to get back to work.

“The problem with increasing the welfare subsidy is it will be a further disincentive to get back to work,” he said.