‘I’m terrified’: residents of Victoria’s Mornington peninsula hit hard by pandemic rent rises

Single mother Francesca Young is living in a sharehouse in her home town of Rye on the Mornington Peninsula so she can afford the rent. Photograph: Christopher Hopkins/The Guardian

Francesca Young began renting on Victoria’s Mornington peninsula as a single mother of three in the early 2000s when properties were “pretty easy to find and reasonably priced”.

But after the 51-year-old’s second marriage ended and she emerged from hospital following a health scare in 2019, she was shocked at the region’s rental prices when she re-entered the market.