Sitting in the Tasmanian winter sun cuddling her neighbour’s fluffy white dog, Hannah is typical of many 21-year-olds, and studying hard. But unlike most of her peers, she logs on to her administration course from a patched-up tent where she lives with her partner, Dylan, who is off work with a broken foot. Snow-capped Mount Wellington looms in the background of a place where Antarctic blasts bring freezing nights.
Hannah and Dylan are part of a growing number of working poor forced into tents and caravans, and among those who now shelter at the showgrounds of one of the nation’s coldest cities.
Welcome to Hobart – home to the country’s most unaffordable metropolitan rents.
Michael, 54, is next door. “I call that my prison on wheels,” he says, pointing to his caravan. Like Hannah, he’s been at the Hobart showgrounds for a few months. “If I hear another person say a job will fix your problem, I don’t know what I’ll do,” he says. “The bloke over there, he has a job and he can’t get a house.”
Hobart’s housing crisis bit in 2017, just before Christmas, when desperate Tasmanians first sought refuge at the showgrounds with swags, tents and campervans. Royal Agricultural Society president, Scott Gadd, found himself an accidental “poster boy for homelessness”.
“It coincided with short stays,” he says. “Everybody converted their rentals. House prices that did nothing for decades suddenly went bang. And the stock was not there, as governments of all colours had done nothing for decades.”
There was a reprieve during Covid when the state closed its borders, but in the past few months tourists have returned, sending victims of housing stress back to the showgrounds.
“I won’t turn people away if I can help it,” Gadd says. “Most of them are working. They get up in the morning and go to work and their kids go to school.”
Hobart’s housing statistics aren’t pretty, unless you’re a homeowner celebrating eight suburbs entering the millionaire’s club for median house values.
The Rental Affordability Index rates Greater Hobart as the country’s least affordable metropolitan area due to inadequate supply, high rents (the median rent has increased by 50% since 2016) and low incomes.
The lines of people snaking down the street at rental open homes don’t have to be told the rental market remains the tightest in the country with a vacancy rate of 0.3%, well below the healthy benchmark of 3%.
It’s little wonder 4,431 households are on the state government’s waiting list for social housing.
Housing researcher Prof Peter Phibbs is one of the Covid refugees who quit Sydney and Melbourne for Hobart. “Hobart is experiencing a population growth that looks like Melbourne or Sydney, not sleepy old Hobart,” he says. “It’s often not a problem of poverty, of not being able to afford the rent – it’s that you can’t find a place to rent.”
Phibbs recently found half of Hobart’s Airbnbs had been long-term rentals for locals, and as a proportion of its private rental market, Greater Hobart has seven times more Airbnbs than Sydney and almost five times more than Melbourne.
“It’s a dysfunctional housing market,” Phibbs says, adding that it’s also seen in some regional coastal areas. “You can’t run a society where people can’t move to a place to be a teacher or a doctor because they can’t get a house.”
Hobart city council is making moves towards banning whole houses becoming short stays. Airbnb told the ABC the “disappointing” step won’t solve the complex issue of housing supply.
The Liberal state government has begun a record $1.5bn build of 10,000 homes in a decade. But Kate Kelly, of Hobartians Facing Homelessness, doubts there is the capacity to build three houses a day to meet the target.
Kelly, a candidate in the city’s upcoming council election, says the problem is often hidden. “I know people who are homeless who don’t admit it, who don’t see themselves as homeless. They don’t fit the stereotype of sleeping on the street with a brown-paper bag. I don’t know anybody in the private rental market who feels secure. Some people pay up to 70% of their income in rent.”
Phibbs warns international students are yet to return en masse to Hobart post-Covid and will only increase demand for housing.
Tasmanian Julie Collins is the new federal housing minister, and last month joined the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, at Bridgewater, a broadacre housing estate north of Hobart.
“I actually grew up and spent my first few years in this community in public housing,” Collins said as she spruiked the housing promises made in the election. Albanese noted the waiting list for a house in Tasmania had tripled since 2017. “There is a housing crisis here,” he said. “Nothing’s more important in determining people’s opportunities in life than a secure roof over their head. I know it because I have lived it.”
Those living at the showgrounds are on borrowed time and relying on politicians to deliver. The site will be redeveloped and Michael knows they’ll soon need to move. “After here, there is nowhere,” he says.
Gadd is also resigned. “I’m going to go from a guy who helped the homeless to a guy that kicked them all out,” he says.
