Housing Stress Today: Estimates for Statistical Local Areas in 2005

This paper presents estimates of housing stress for Statistical Local Areas (SLA) in Victoria, Queensland and the ACT in 2005. The estimates were created by synthesising small-area microdata for measuring housing stress. The technique involves the reweighting of a national ABS sample survey to Census benchmarks for each small area at the SLA level. The reweighting process converts the set of national household weights obtained from the sample survey into sets of household weights for small areas (one set per SLA). This paper defines a household in housing stress as being one that is in the bottom 40 per cent of equivalent household disposable income and whose net spending on housing after subtracting any rent assistance received is more than 30 per cent of their income (i.e. a ‘net’ rather than ‘gross’ housing stress measure). Housing stress was found to be more prevalent in the urban areas – especially in the capital cities, followed by other urban centres (especially the fast-growing regions on the eastern seaboard).