Shanaka Herath, SMART Infrastructure Facility at University of Wollongong and Rebecca Bentley, University of Melbourne

Overcrowding is an inevitable and often overlooked result of the affordable housing shortage in our cities.

When a dwelling requires four or more extra bedrooms to reasonably accommodate occupants, the standard commonly used in Australia defines that as severe overcrowding. In 2011, 41,390 Australians lived in severely overcrowded dwellings, an increase of one-third from 2006. This increase occurred mostly in cities where house prices had risen sharply.

Our recent research, to be published soon, examined where overcrowded housing is located in our capital cities. We found:

• Sydney and Melbourne are most affected by concentrated overcrowding
• levels of overcrowding are highest in middle-city areas (except in Adelaide)
• overcrowding overlaps strongly with socioeconomic disadvantage. Continue reading →