Dennis Hayes considers himself lucky.
After a life travelling around the country, he was forced into retirement after contracting the potentially deadly bacterial disease melioidosis while working in the Northern Territory's Top End.
Then he found his one-bedroom granny flat in the satellite city of Palmerston, near Darwin, and made a home for himself.
"Long-term, I want to stay in Darwin," he said. "I've travelled all around Australia and I want to finish up here."
As a pensioner, Mr Hayes was able to live in one of the 36,000 properties under the National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS), which means he has had about 25 per cent of his rent subsidised under a 10-year agreement between the government and his landlord.
However, his long-term plan is now in jeopardy, as the NRAS — which began in 2008 — will wrap up in 2026. And his specific, 10-year agreement will end in August this year.
Many NRAS properties are managed by Community Housing Providers, meaning their rent will stay below market value once the scheme ends.
However people such as Mr Hayes — whose properties are managed by private landlords — could be at the mercy of the market.
"At the moment, I'm paying $217 a week in rent. Market rent would have been about $260 when I moved in [three years ago]," Mr Hayes said.
"But now it's up to about $280 to $310, which is the market value of rent for a one-bedroom development."
If he is offered a new lease with a significant spike in rent, he will "probably have to accept it", due to competitiveness in the current rental market.
However, he said, the hike in rent would have a significant impact on his life.
"At the moment, my discretionary spending is reasonable," he said.
"But, if an extra $60, $80 a week [is taken] out of my pension, it just limits [me] very much.
"Obviously, your rent and your food and everything comes first. And anything left over … whether you need a new TV or … you've got to buy a new fridge or something like that, it will make it a lot harder."
Mr Hayes said being on an age pension — which has a maximum base rate of $485.75 a week for a single person — puts him in a better position than those on JobSeeker, at $346.55 per week.
"At the moment, unless the Commonwealth increases rent assistance or does something, it's going be hard for age pensioners, but also a lot more difficult for people [who] are on disability or unemployment [benefits]," he said.
"[For them], it's going to be impossible."
Lapse of scheme could push people into homelessness
According to Anglicare's latest Rental Affordability Snapshot — which uses data from realestate.com.au — there were zero suitable and affordable rentals available for singles on the aged care pension in the Northern Territory.
Nationally, Anglicare found there were 312, or 0.7 per cent of rentals, that were suitable and affordable for the same group.
"The snapshot follows the internationally accepted benchmark that rent needs to be no more than 30 per cent of a household budget to be affordable for people on low incomes," the report reads.
Anglicare Australia executive director Kasy Chambers said the Northern Territory was "one of the most expensive parts of the country for renters".
"Our latest rental affordability snapshot found that there were no affordable rental listings across the entire territory for a person on any Centrelink payment," she said.
"That means that thousands of territorians on the lowest incomes — people on government payments, pensioners and people in minimum wage jobs — are being forced to pay much more than they can afford."
NT Shelter chief executive Peter McMillan said the current rental vacancy rate across the Northern Territory was less than 3 per cent, which was making rentals hard to acquire, even for people with medium or high incomes.
"In some of our regions, effectively, there's nowhere for people to rent. And it's why we're seeing dozens of families turning up to open houses, trying to get a rental and being unsuccessful," he said.
Mr McMillan said wrapping up NRAS in the current market — and with the growing cost of living — could push people into homelessness.
"Certainly, at the present time, we simply can't afford to have fewer social affordable housing dwellings in Australia. We can ill afford to lose the 940 here in the Northern Territory," he said.
"Every stock that we have, that is social or affordable housing, needs to remain in our system, because there are many families that are waiting their chance to get access to one."
'They can't simply walk away now'
Mr McMillan welcomed the federal government's $10 billion proposal to build 30,000 new affordable houses in the next five years under its Housing Australia Future Fund.
However, in the meantime, he said, there needed to be a "transition mechanism" for people dropping off the NRAS scheme.
"We simply can't have the Commonwealth government rely on the fact that it's building housing, and ignoring the plight of families in the meantime," he said.
"They can't simply walk away now and turn their backs on struggling renters."
When asked, federal Housing Minister Julie Collins did not commit to extending the scheme, but said in a statement that $575 million in funding from the government's National Housing Infrastructure Facility would go into delivering new social and affordable rental homes.
Ms Collins said the Housing Australia Future fund was the "single biggest investment from the federal government in social and affordable housing in more than a decade".
"This is on top of the Housing Accord, which includes federal funding to deliver 10,000 affordable rental homes over five years from 2024," she said.
She also today announced $67.5 million in funding for homelessness services across the country over the coming year.
Mr McMillan also called for an increase in the Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA) payment which, although is indexed to account for inflation, he said, has not been keeping up with rental prices.
"The Commonwealth government will point to the fact that it spends $5.3 billion each year. That amount has significantly been deteriorating in real terms since 2016," he said.
Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth said in a statement that the CRA would be reviewed by an Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee ahead of each federal budget.
'Record numbers' of requests for help
CatholicCare NT provides financial counselling, capacity building and emergency relief for people in crisis.
Financial wellbeing and housing support manager Kelly Gulliver said her team was seeing "record numbers" of requests for their services.
"Across all of our sites, just in the financial well-being and capability team, we've seen 592 people already this month," Ms Gulliver said last week.
"And it's kind of a new cohort of people, as well, that we're seeing. So we're seeing some people who have got pretty good incomes, but their landlords have increased their rent, or their mortgages [have risen]."
Ms Gulliver said a number of NRAS participants were among those seeking assistance.
"We've had some people come and see us who are worried about it. Their leases haven't finished yet, but they want to know more information," she said.
"There's a lot of uncertainty: Will they be evicted? Will they be able to afford their rent moving forward?"
