Scarce aged care places increasingly favour families able to pay large accommodation deposits, drawing on housing wealth that may be the only debt-free asset shared across three generations.

Last week I gave a preview of the resilience index through its health dimension, using particular communities as the example. This week we detail one angle that straddles both health and financial resilience: what happens to a family when a parent needs aged care.

For a few decades after the war, an ordinary wage could buy a house. A machinist, a train driver or a process worker could take on a mortgage, pay it off and own something outright. That had almost never happened before in human history. It has not happened much since.

Those workers are now in their seventies and eighties, part of an ageing boomer generation. The house they paid off is, for many families, the only debt-free asset across three generations. The parents own it. Their Gen X children are still paying off their own. Their Gen Z grandchildren cannot get near one.

Then one parent has a fall, or dementia reaches the point where home is no longer safe. Then suddenly a family meets the aged care system. What it finds is a queue, and a price for getting to the front of it.

Residential aged care is about 95 per cent full, on a departmental estimate from January. The sector added a net 802 places in 2024–25. An independent review commissioned by the government says the country needs 10,600 more every year for the next 20 years. Last month state governments counted more than 3,600 older people in hospital beds, medically ready to leave, waiting on aged care.

When beds are that scarce, providers choose. The review, tabled in April, did not dress this up. It found that “providers preference residents who can pay more for their accommodation”. The Commonwealth-funded Older Persons Advocacy Network calls it cherry-picking.

Families learn quickly what moves an application to the top of the pile. It is the refundable accommodation deposit. The average advertised room price passed $600,000 in May, according to Mirus Australia. The average price new residents actually agreed was $470,000 in 2024–25, the latest official figure. At Regis, the big listed provider, the average advertised price is now........

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