Australia is in the grip of a housing crisis and the rental market is failing too many people — especially older women, according to the latest Rental Affordability Index (RAI).
The report, released today by the National Shelter, Community Sector Banking and SGS, found low-income households could no longer afford to live in metropolitan areas.
Pensioners and students were the most vulnerable, with some of them winding up homeless.
Adrian Pisarski, executive officer of National Shelter, was involved with compiling the index and said there was, "virtually no affordable housing in any Australian city for people on low incomes".
"This is now representative of a true housing crisis in Australia and a true market failure," he said.
Sydney remained the worst city to rent, bleeding some households of almost 90 per cent of their incomes.
Hobart was the second worst area, due to the number of people there living on low incomes.
And then it was glitzy holiday destinations like Noosa on the Sunshine Coast, or the Gold Coast in south east Queensland.
Mr Pisarski said problems arise when lower-income households spend more than a third of their income on rent.
"We are expecting that homelessness would have risen quite sharply," he said.
"All of the reports that we get from services across Australia is their services are under increasing stress.
"We know that there have been many reports about older people suffering from homelessness, older women in particular."
In addition to urgent tax reforms to stop over-priced property investment, Mr Pisarski said the private sector needed to invest more in community housing.
"We need to have the right incentives in place to encourage a build-to-rent sector in Australia," he said.
"More and more Australians are likely to be renting."
'How could this happen to people like me?'
Plunging into homelessness can happen in the blink of an eye.
Julie, 61, experienced it first hand after having to leave her well-paid job.
"I could not deal with day-to-day things like paying my rent, just paying bills basically," she said.
"This led to me losing everything — house, car, you name it.
"At the time I thought this was my own personal phenomena, how could this happen to people like me?
"But I don't think this is unusual, from what I understand these days."
Her situation was exacerbated by struggles with anxiety and depression.
But Julie, who did not want to give her last name, said Centrelink just was not enough to pay rent in Melbourne.
"I couldn't afford to think about private rental, because I couldn't control my life," she said.
"I became sleeping at friends, to actually going up to the high country and sleeping in cattlemen's huts."
