In the shed of the house where Lynette* sleeps, boxes are piled high. The 66-year-old dreams of unpacking the cartons – placing plates on shelves, hanging her coats in a wardrobe, picking fresh flowers for her favourite vase.
Lynette is on the pension and works as a casual primary school teacher. On the weekends she teaches golf. She is also homeless.
She has been staying with a friend in Kilsyth, in Melbourne’s outer east. It’s not ideal for either of them, but it is keeping her from rough sleeping.
“She is my closest friend,” Lynette says. “She said, ‘I won’t have you sleep in the car’.”
Like many essential workers, Lynette is priced out of the area where she works. Homelessness organisations say they are witnessing an increase in essential workers – often part-time nurses, teachers – needing their services.
Lynette has been on the public housing waitlist for nine years. “There’s just no way I’ll ever be offered a place off that list,” she says.
Last month, the non-for-profit Community Housing Limited suggested she apply for a place coming up in Mordialloc, 24km south-east of Melbourne’s CBD and about an hour’s drive from the two schools she teaches at.
“My friends and support and family are here,” she says. “I can’t go that far away.”
In October 2022, Lynette’s rental property in The Basin was wrecked in flooding. The water came up under her bed, forcing her to flee.
For more than a year she lived on friends’ couches and in temporary accommodation before her friend invited her to stay with her until she found something permanent. Lynette has moved eight times in the past two years. She has tried rentals and caravan parks, but there is nothing she can afford. She just wants a place of her own.
“The whole system is broken,” she says in despair. “It’s not just me.”
The CEO of Anchor, Heidi Tucker, says in the last fortnight her organisation had seen three households seeking help after mortgage foreclosure. All three households had people in work, she says.
“We’re seeing more and more people looking for support who are employed.
“The biggest pressure that people have when they’re coming out of ownership, or like Lynette, is there is nothing on the rental market.”
Tucker says it is common for social housing to be offered to tenants over an hour away from where they live.
“That’s happening all the time. There’s so little stock that it’s not spread evenly.”
She says mum and dad landlords are running “small businesses” to grow wealth for their retirements – and so do not offer affordable rentals.
“There’s so little in affordable housing, I think that’s the real missing link that we’ve got in Australia at the moment,” she said.
According to the Australian Taxation Office, 2.2 million Australians own 3.25m investment properties. And at least 2,500 investors own or part-own 10 or more rental properties.
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In October last year, Anglicare’s rental affordability snapshot revealed nurses can afford just 1.4% of properties, ambulance workers 2.2%, while firefighters and teachers could afford less than 4%.
Maiy Azize, a spokesperson for Everybody’s Home, a coalition of housing, homelessness and welfare organisations, says it’s a “dire picture” for workers in lower-paid industries such as retail, cleaning and delivery.
“It’s not really clear how they can afford to live,” she says. “If they don’t have a partner, they’re doing something like renting in a share house, in rental stress.”
Up until the early 1980s, it was common for the federal government to fund affordable housing, Azize says.
“As the federal government has really stepped back from funding social housing, what we’ve seen is that the eligibility criteria that the different [social housing providers] use has become really, really restrictive,” she said.
“It’s now basically just a safety net for people at the margins, as opposed to something that’s regarded as a basic human service.”
Unless the federal government steps in to fund housing, she says services will become more stressed and affluent communities will lose essential workers from their neighbourhoods.
“It’s not possible to fix it without the federal government. They’re the only level of government that has the money to do it.”
Since the last federal election, rental prices have skyrocketed 27% to $635 a week, and housing affordability is the lowest the nation has ever seen.
The Labor government has announced measures including the help-to-buy scheme targeted at first home buyers and a $10bn Housing Australia Future Fund to fund the building of 30,000 social and affordable homes.
Meanwhile, the Coalition has promised to allow first home buyers to access up to $50,000 – or 40% – of their super to buy their first home, to reduce overseas migration and ease home lending rules.
The Greens want a rent cap, a national renters protection authority to protect renters’ rights and an end to investor tax breaks like negative gearing and capital gains.
* For privacy, only Lynette’s first name has been used.
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