Marian Reeves is living in a tent in northern Victoria after floods made the home she rents uninhabitable.
Knowing how tight the rental market is in Greater Shepparton, Ms Reeves is planning a fresh start interstate.
"We're not going to be able to find anywhere new because there are thousands of us that are homeless now," she said.
"All the houses that have to be fixed could take months. Some could even take years.
"We've decided we're going to move back to South Australia but, the thing is, we don't have the money to do that."
Ms Reeves's landlord has issued a notice to vacate, giving her family of five a deadline of 14 days to retrieve the belongings they can salvage from their Mooroopna home.
For now, they are camping at a family member's property in the nearby town of Katamatite.
But rain and thunderstorms are making a bad situation worse.
"We woke up this morning to ankle-deep water, so we've gotta try to find somewhere else to move," she said.
Temporary housing shortfall
Advocacy groups and homelessness services say the damage from regional Victoria's flooding will deepen its housing crisis.
On the back of decades of underinvestment in affordable and social housing Michael Oerlemans, Anglicare Victoria's north-central regional director, said the floods exacerbated the issues.
"We know there are a number of people who are going to enter homelessness for the first time," he said.
"There will also be people living in substandard housing."
Mr Oerlemans said he hoped the federal government's first budget would address longstanding housing issues and increase its rental assistance.
The head of a Bendigo-based housing and homelessness service says the flood could have a "terrifying" impact on already vulnerable Victorians.
Haven, Home, Safe chief executive Trudi Ray said it was too early to know the full extent of how the natural disaster would impact the availability of rental properties.
"In regional Victoria, the state government is investing $1.25 billion into housing, but the issue that we have is we already have supply pressures," she said.
"The very limited supply we have will be taken up again."
Ms Ray said the sector needed to consider long-term plans for how to manage the impact of climate damage on housing.
"We need to think about investing in more temporary living options following disasters," she said.
Hospital concerned about housing staff
Goulburn Valley Health is one of the major employers in the Shepparton region and with an underlying vacancy rate of about 15 per cent it is trying to attract new employees.
Chief executive Matt Sharp is concerned finding housing for staff coming from interstate and overseas would be a bigger issue post-floods.
"Accommodation was already a big issue for this town and this district," he said.
Mr Sharp also worries about existing staff whose homes are flood-damaged.
"[I'm concerned about] what that will mean for them from a wellbeing and a health point of view," he said.
"But also what that might mean for them to be able to come to work and when they'll be ready to come [back] to work."
Renters desperate to find new homes
Real estate business owner Rocky Gagliardi said the existing low occupancy rates in Shepparton and Mooroopna would make it harder for people displaced by flooding to find new homes to rent.
"Already we've had a lot of tenants looking for new homes — not just our tenants but tenants from everywhere," he said.
Mr Gagliardi said long-term tenants of flood-damaged properties could be surprised by current rental prices.
"A lot of tenants who have been renting for a long time probably haven't felt the rise in rent that has been happening the last 12–18 months," he said.
For now, Ms Reeves is spending all of her time, energy and money mopping up a home she no longer lives in.
"I have to travel 160 kilometres every day at the moment just to clean out an empty house and live in a tent," she said.
"It's not fair and I know a lot others are feeling the same — I'm not the only one who's lost."
