Julie A Macdonald

Government charges employed teens to stay at home

Housing SA has advised public housing tenants that any child living at home will have their income assessed from September this year and will be required to pay rent from November.

For young people between the ages of 16 and 20 the amount will be 15 per cent of their income, and for those over 20, 25 per cent will be charged. Study allowances, such as Austudy or Youth Allowance, will also be considered as income and added to rent hikes.

The rules will result in a dramatic change to how children in public housing are treated. Currently, children under the age of 20 add just $5 a week to a family's rent.

Housing Trust Tenants Association assistant secretary Julie Macdonald said she was concerned the changes would act as a disincentive to young people getting jobs, and for those attempting to save enough money to leave the public housing sector. She also said the system risked children becoming the primary breadwinners.

"We are concerned about children paying more rent than mum and dad and thereby becoming the breadwinner of the household,"

she said. "I am worried that we will have children as young as 16 threatening to leave home.

"Kids who decide to get a job at Foodland while they are studying are going to find it very hard to give up 15 per cent of that."

Family First MLC Rob Brokenshire said he had been contacted by constituents concerned the move would push young people out of home and dampen their ambitions.

"The biggest issue that really concerns me - over and above the fact that I think this is just a desperate cash grab that will hit young people very hard - is this potentially will ruin family units," he said.

"This Government ... seems to want to tax everything, including young people's efforts to get on their feet in society when their family, in many cases, have come through great adversity as public or community housing tenants. Whichever way you look at this, this is bad social and public policy and I am calling on the Government to urgently revisit this and reverse this cash grab."

SA Council of Social Services executive director Ross Womersley said he was concerned that the policy changes might have unintended consequences.

"This is another of those decisions flowing from the Sustainable Budget Commission that has the impact of penalising people who may have the least kind of capacity to pay and as a result it is likely to make it more difficult for people to escape financial hardship," he said.

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