Janine (not her real name) is a 60-year-old on the disability pension and works part-time to make ends meet. She lives in a three-bedroom apartment in Melbourne’s west with her daughter.
She earns about $2,500 a month, equivalent to $30,000 a year.
Nearly 70 per cent of that money goes on rent.
Now, she’s facing a rental increase of $265 a month. She worries that she’ll either need to cough up the money, or face homelessness.
‘I think I’m being punished’
Janine, who has asked to remain anonymous for fear her landlord will evict her for speaking out, fears she’s being “punished” with the latest rental increase.
Just before COVID-19, she signed a five-year lease for her home, which was “fairly cheap” when she moved in. Due to mandated rent freezes and the long contract, the landlord was unable to increase the rent over that period.
But now, the monthly rent increase will make her rent almost $2,000 per month, or 80 per cent of her total income.
According to Janine, her landlord, who she said owns four other properties, was looking to recuperate some of his lost income from COVID-19. Janine was also told by real estate agents that other properties in her area were going for more and if she and her daughter wanted to stay, they needed to pay the extra $265.
“I think I’m being punished with the [increase] I’m getting at the moment,” she says.
It’s a common feeling many renters have — being too scared to ask for repairs or to challenge rental increases in fear of retribution or , which are still happening across Australia due to inconsistent legislation banning the practice.
Janine contacted Consumer Affairs Victoria, who suggested she contest the rental increase. But she was hesitant due to the power imbalance.
“We’re not in a position to do that because our landlord has multiple properties and if we question the rent increase, he’ll just kick us out. Then we’re stuck,” she said.
“You annoy certain landlords and they verbally blackball you through real estate agents. You can’t get another property. That’s happened to me before.”
“People say they can’t just kick you out, but they’re rich property owners. They have way more money than me. They have means and ways to work around the system and get people out of their properties.”
Janine says her landlord is aware that she’s on a disability pension and living with her daughter.
“I’ve never found a decent landlord who just treats tenants like they’re people.”
What’s ‘affordable’ anyway?
A home is considered ‘affordable’ if it costs less than 30 per cent of your household income.
Across Australia, it’s used as a metric for prospective tenants to gauge whether they can afford the price point of a property without financial stress.
But Janine says that because of her low income, it’s difficult to get approved for rental properties as she sits above the 30/70 benchmark.
Because she’s spending 70 per cent of her income on rent, the rental affordability index places her under the most severe rental unaffordability metric, dubbed ‘critically unaffordable rents’.
At times, she’s needed to enlist the help of a friend during applications and have them sign a lease with her, purely so she isn’t immediately turned away.
Students have previously protested against rent increases amid a rental crisis with vacancies at historic lows. Source: Getty / Lisa Maree Williams
Janine says there are no properties on the market that would be affordable for her based on the rental affordability formula.
“I’m trapped in a position where I have to pay this huge giant increase or get kicked out, and if I get kicked out, I’m homeless.”
She’s not the only one in such a predicament.
Australia reaches record lows for rental affordability
Rental affordability has plunged to record lows in almost every capital city and region, with low-income renters bearing the harshest brunt of the crisis, according to the 10th annual
Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide all recorded their worst affordability scores since the index began in 2014. Greater Perth is now Australia’s least affordable capital city, alongside Greater Sydney.
The only states with slight improvements in rental affordability were the ACT and Tasmania, including Hobart.
Across Victoria where Janine lives, rental affordability is worse in 2024 than in 2014.
The report found low-income households were most at risk, with 42 per cent in rental stress, classified by spending over 30 per cent of their income on housing. That’s a 58 per cent increase from 2008.
Single people on JobSeeker payments and single pensioners face severely to critically unaffordable rentals across the whole of Australia.
The only places students living in sharehouses could afford across Australia were regional areas in Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania — often some distance away from their university campuses.
The one group of people who could access affordable rents across most metropolitan and regional areas were dual-income couples with children earning a combined $219,000, the equivalent of two full-time teachers’ wages.
A majority of Australian cities are regarded as unaffordable. Source: SBS News
“Renters across the entire country are under severe pressure as rent rises continue to outpace income growth amid historically low vacancy rates,” National Shelter spokesperson John Engeler said.
“The situation is especially serious for low-income renters who are increasingly forced to rent privately due to the declining availability of social and affordable housing.”
“A single pensioner would have to spend 86 per cent of their income to rent a median one-bedroom apartment in Sydney. This is clearly unacceptable. Governments must urgently act to reverse this affordability crisis including by building more social and affordable homes and better regulating rental markets.”
Low-income households are more at risk for rental stress. Source: SBS News
Struggling to make ends meet
With $2,000 of her income about to go to rent, that will leave Janine with only $500 leftover at the end of each month for bare essentials like groceries, utilities, and medical expenses.
Because of the cost, she limits her meals to once a day.
“I eat just once a day,” she says. “I try to go to the supermarket when they’re marking down all the food. I have dumpster-dived for food … the staff are very nice and gently place the non-perishables in the garbage rather than throwing them in.”
Janine says she also deliberately spaces out her pain management medication due to the cost. She doesn’t do extracurricular activities and she’s concerned her car is due for a service soon, adding that she may need to borrow money from a friend to pay for it.
As someone who’s been in the same low socioeconomic cycle for over 30 years, Janine notes that she’s seen an increase in community-based help, like food banks, in recent years.
But she says there’s been little governmental or policy assistance, especially when it comes to housing instability and rental reform.
As she isn’t in debt or behind on her bills, she doesn’t qualify for financial hardship or government grants.
The rent assistance she was eligible for via her disability pension was still small, with her saying it doesn’t cover even a quarter of her monthly rental.
To top it off, she has spent 25 years on a public housing ‘waitlist’, only to discover that it wasn’t a waitlist at all – it was a list for expressions of interest.
“I’ve been sitting on a waitlist for 25 years thinking that at some point, my name will get to the top of the list and I’ll be offered some sort of public housing,” she says.
Instead, she was told she wasn’t a “priority” for the eligibility criteria.
“The government has no idea about what people are going through,” she says.
“We’re real people and need homes to live in.”
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