3 - Community Services & Health Industry Skills Council

Home ownership contributes a large part of the wealth of many households. Higher rates ofhome ownership among older age groups generally reflect wealth accumulation over the lifecycle, although the growing practice of housing equity withdrawal means this is no longer asstraightforward. Housing equity withdrawal is when a person uses the wealth accumulatedthrough house ownership to help pay for household expenses. Wealth accumulated throughhousing equity acquired during a person’s working life can be used to support householdexpenses, as income typically falls after retirement. See Section 2.4 for further information ondifferences in household income by household composition and age.Younger couples, generally those aged 35 and under, and lone-person households of all ageswere more likely than older households to be paying off a home mortgage, or renting from aprivate landlord. However older people, defined as those aged 65 and over, had slightly higherusage of state or territory provided housing (AIHW analysis of ABS 2011 Census).Older people are generally more likely than younger people to have relatively low housingcosts. However, older people also tend to have lower incomes, so housing affordability can be asignificant concern for people of retirement age with relatively high-cost housing, such as thoserenting in the private market. People unable to attain home ownership during their workinglife are at risk of being pushed into severe financial stress by private rents that tend to be highin relation to retirement incomes, or forced to depend on social housing (see Section 3.6). Thisgroup includes older people who are lower income workers and those who have been outsidethe labour force for an extended period over their working life, such as people with disability andinformal carers.Tenure of Indigenous AustraliansIn contrast to the general population, rental accommodation remains the dominant form oftenure for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Data from the 2011 Census indicate that59% of Indigenous households were renters, and almost half of these (26% of all Indigenoushouseholds) rented from a state or territory housing authority or community housing (ABS2012f ). Around 1 in 3 (36%) Indigenous households were owner-occupiers in 2011—25% with amortgage and 11% without a mortgage. (Note that an Indigenous household is one in which atleast one person identifies as being Indigenous).Among households with a reference person aged 65 or over, 41% of Indigenous householdsowned their home outright compared with 71% of other households. The proportion ofIndigenous households who rented from a state or territory housing authority or communityhousing varied according to the age of the reference person, ranging from a low of 23% of thoseaged 15 to 24 to a high of 30% of those aged 65–74 (Table A3.4).3Australia’s welfare 2013 101