Owning a house means you own an asset that will in most cases track with the value of shelter generally, and shelter is something you will always need. If you're anticipating a general downturn in house prices, the house should still retain it's relative value to a unit in assisted living or some such. I could see the argument that the health care component won't drop with real estate values, but it should still form a significant percentage of the cost and therefore drop along with a general downturn.
Noting that we're comparing it to the average super fund with far too conservative settings and far too many fees, I don't think it's really throwing good money after bad.
A significant part of my experience was in home supervised care (in a relatives house), so not really affected by real estate value. But I had failed to consider that it would likely generate a down turn in the costs of things like retirement homes and thus a knock on decrease in the cost of residential nursing homes for low care facilities. I doubt the cost of high care would change much but there's significant government assistance available in that area (and its highly restricted already).
Honest question, if people have high enough income to have a mortgage approved, are they poor? I hate typing that because it sounds pretty ignorant, but I don't know the answer. The problem that "super for house deposits" wants to solve seems more towards people with a decent income that haven't saved in their younger years, and then upon deciding that they'd like a house, calculate how long it would take them to save a 10% deposit and go "oh fuck" and give up on the idea. Not for people with already low incomes. Martin argues that getting those higher income, lower savings people into their own house could reduce competition for rents and potentially make rental property more affordable for those that can't reasonably afford the mortgage repayments.
I guess that depends on how we define poor and also "housing". The median income is ~$39 000 , for the purpose of getting into the housing market we can probably double that, since a house (rather than a unit) is a family thing , so I guess that'd give us ~$78 000 a year.
A quick look on google suggests total costs for a (mortgaged) home is ~$29 000 a year for a family of 4. Which means that a separation is likely to tank things pretty hard, right off the bat even for someone who's on an "average income". So yeah, you're probably right that you need to be significantly above poverty level to get an approval.
A similarly quick look at rental costs suggests that you're not saving a lot by renting either (~$150 / week) , so saving a deposit is going to be very difficult for 1 person and is a risky investment for 2 people in a relationship given the odds of separation in the time it'd take to save a deposit.
Basically a median family can do it, fairly comfortably, but they are likely a fairly high risk given separation rates (because a median single person is probably going to drown).
ETA - It won't reduce the competition for rent either, if the people are buying the house they'd otherwise be renting, since its effectively just permanent rent from an availability point of view. It only decreases rent pressure if new housing is built.
