workforce
Nurses pushed out
The property market
boom is driving nurses
out of key city areas.
Peter Phibbs interviewed
by Dallas Bastian
A
n early-career enrolled nurse who works in inner-city
Sydney would have to settle down 150km away in
Cessnock in the Hunter Valley just to find an affordable
home to purchase.
That’s according to a recent study carried out by researchers
from the University of Sydney that found that nurses, police,
teachers and other emergency and key services workers are
feeling the squeeze of Sydney’s property market boom.
Co-author Professor Nicole Gurran said Sydney’s overstretched
housing market is locking teachers, firefighters, nurses, police,
ambulance drivers and paramedics out of home ownership. “Our
key workers are increasingly being forced to outer metropolitan
areas in search of an affordable place to live,” Gurran said.
The research, commissioned by Teachers Mutual Bank,
Firefighters Mutual Bank and Police Bank, found that in the
10 years to 2016, key areas in Sydney lost between 10 and 20 per
cent of teachers, nurses, police and emergency service workers
to outer and regional areas, while areas such as the Illawarra,
Southern Highlands and Hunter Valley all had net gains.
Between 2003 and 2016, the median price of established
homes in Sydney more than doubled from $400,000 to around
$900,000, the report read. It added that higher rents have
heightened the crisis by making a 20 per cent home loan deposit
unattainable for many key workers.
The team said a single key worker eyeing a property in Sydney’s
inner ring at the 2016 median price of just over $1 million would
need 13 years to save for a deposit, marking a jump from the
8.4 years needed to save a 20 per cent deposit in 2006.
Affordability is somewhat greater for dual-income key worker
households, the study said, but is still poor for lower paid key
workers and those with dependent children.
“A couple – including a registered nurse and a second income
earner earning 50,000 per annum with two dependents – would
only be able to afford a median-priced home in three suburbs
within the metropolitan region (all outer ring).”
Nurses and police also struggle to find affordable rental
accommodation in Sydney’s inner and middle ring. Areas with
30 agedcareinsite.com.au
the most affordable rental prices also tend to have the fewest
private rental housing units, particularly smaller one-bedroom
rental properties.
Steve James, chief executive of Teachers Mutual Bank, said
that, for a key worker, finding somewhere affordable to live in
reasonable proximity to their work is becoming impossible for
those not already in the property market.
“This study shows that without urgent and genuine intervention
on the part of policymakers and other institutions, a growing
number of key workers in NSW and Sydney may never be able to
afford to own their own home within a reasonable distance of
Sydney,” he said.
Aged Care Insite spoke with study co-author Professor Peter
Phibbs to find out what can be done to ensure key workers aren’t
pushed out of inner city areas into the future.
ACI: The study said there is evidence to suggest that high
house prices and rents are pushing out some of Sydney’s
key workers. What areas are experiencing the biggest
net losses?
PP: The net losses are occurring from the inner parts of Sydney,
but also in the middle suburbs. Over about a 10-year period, we
measured between a 10 and 20 per cent loss in most of those
inner and middle areas, but in places like Parramatta, which had
one of the highest losses, over 21 per cent of key workers had
left that particular part of the city. It’s an inner and middle ring
phenomenon, and it appears that the key workers are moving to
outer parts of Sydney, but also to areas outside Sydney like the
Central Coast, the Hunter Valley and the Illawarra.
What do the property and rental markets look like for nurses,
particularly enrolled nurses who are the lowest paid of the
workers in the study?
For enrolled nurses, in terms of home ownership, there are really
no parts of Sydney left that are affordable. By affordable, we
mean making payments that aren’t more than 30 per cent of their
income. The closest area we can find where it’s affordable for an
enrolled nurse is Cessnock in the Hunter Valley, which is obviously
a long way away from many of Sydney’s hospitals.
The study also identified a growing spatial mismatch between
where key workers live and work generally. What impact is this
having on their daily lives and on their choices surrounding
things like transport to and from work?
I think for a lot of key workers, especially enrolled nurses, people
are just having much longer commutes – over an hour each way