Thousands of Hunter holiday rental properties sit vacant for most of the year while homelessness grows and renters struggle to find affordable accommodation.
The AirDNA website says the Hunter has 4957 holiday rentals, more than half of which are occupied for fewer than 90 days a year.
The Home To Go website lists 11,392 short-term rentals, including private rooms.
A new Mission Australia report says demand for its housing support services, most of which are in NSW, increased 26 per cent from 2020 to 2022, and the number of its clients experiencing homelessness jumped 50 per cent.
The number of Mission Australia housing support clients sleeping in improvised homes, tents or on the streets increased 103 per cent in the same three years, those experiencing domestic violence grew 203 per cent and the number of female clients older than 55 increased 83 per cent.
Homelessness NSW has called on the state and federal governments to invest heavily in new social housing to address the accommodation crisis in the Hunter and across Australia.
The peak body's chief executive, Trina Jones, said on Tuesday that the NSW government also should legislate for holiday rentals to be restricted to a principal place of residence for a maximum of 90 days a year.
"What we don't want to see is curated AirBnB homes sat empty in the off-season while teachers and apprentices and older women sleep in their cars on the streets outside," Ms Jones said.
"We think there should be a return to the original intention of short-term rental accommodation, which was to get to know the locals and experience a place like a local.
"It should not force people who are local to the area to sleep in their cars or in tents because they can't access rentals that are affordable."
The former Coalition state government introduced a short-term rental housing register and 180-day caps on non-hosted rentals in Greater Sydney, Byron Shire and Ballina in late 2021.
But holiday renting on AirBnB and other platforms remains unchecked in the Hunter, including in the coastal holiday towns of Port Stephens.
AirDNA says Port Stephens has 1782 holiday rentals which were booked for 47 per cent of the nights they were available in the past year.
The occupancy rate is 67 per cent in Newcastle's 699 short-term rentals, 50 per cent in Lake Macquarie's 624 holiday lets, and 45 per cent in Cessnock's 1069 rentals.
The Real Estate Institute of NSW's latest rental report says the Newcastle vacancy rate was 1.8 per cent in Newcastle and 1.9 per cent across the Hunter in April.
Ms Jones said short-term rentals should be "limited to the sharing economy, where people rent out their spare room or their home, even their home for a couple of weeks while they're away".
"Online applications of short-term rental accommodation have enabled long-term rental accommodation to be commercialised as holiday rentals," she said.
"This has a significant impact on housing availability and homelessness in some locations, particularly seaside locations.
"We think controls are needed ... at a time when we don't have the supply."
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