At the age of 58, Dawn Dowling never thought she'd be stuck packing her belongings into storage and moving in with a friend.
But that's the reality the supermarket worker is facing, with her rent set to rise by $70 a week, taking up almost all of her income, and no affordable options on the market.
"I need to live somewhere. I don't want to live in my car," she said from her soon-to-be $420 a week two-bedroom unit in Perth's western suburbs.
"Lots of women end up homeless. I'm not going to be one of them."
"But I think if the government doesn't put in something, you know, a safeguard for renters, we're really hooped.
"It's lucky I've got good friends because otherwise I'm not sure what I would do."
Ms Dowling said she now relies on her tax return to pay for things like car registration and insurance.
These kinds of difficult decisions are growing increasingly common for Australians across the nation, with new analysis from Anglicare finding a drought of affordable homes for many households in every state and territory.
Housing availability hits critical low
The community service organisation's 14th annual rental affordability snapshot, published today, sampled Australia's rental market in the middle of last month.
It looked at how many properties were affordable – meaning they would require less than 30 per cent of a person's income – for 13 different types of households.
The report found there were no rentals in the country considered affordable for a single person on the government's youth allowance payment, which pays between $332.90 and $720.40 a fortnight in most cases.
There were just four properties suitable for singles receiving JobSeeker, which currently pays a single person with no children $693.10 a fortnight.
Just over 1 per cent of rentals, or 508 properties, were considered affordable for a couple on the age pension, and for a single person on the age pension that dropped to 162 properties, or just 0.4 per cent of the market.
The snapshot found the situation was worst in the ACT, where there were nearly no affordable properties for most types of households, followed by the NT, New South Wales and WA.
But among all those figures there's one which has Anglicare Australia's executive director Kasy Chambers most worried.
"For the first time ever we've actually seen the affordability crash to below one per cent for a single person working full time on the minimum wage," she said.
"We are really in a crisis when you look at a country that can't offer affordable housing to its lowest-income workers, to the workers that basically keep the country ticking over.
"If we think about who was at the frontline and who we found out was important during our pandemic, these are the workers we're talking about.
"If a country can't do that, then we really need to take a look at ourselves."
'You've got to have a half-decent life'
Those same pressures are squeezing Brad Horton, who calls the southern Perth suburb of Calista home with his wife Nicole and six-year-old daughter Saffyre.
The pair, who were featured in Anglicare's WA snapshot, struggle to work because of ongoing health complications.
Brad said that leaves him receiving $631.20 a fortnight from JobSeeker payments, and Nicole bringing in only slightly more from workers compensation.
He said rent was already costing $360 a week but will soon go up to $415.
"If we were here talking … this time next year, and our new lease come out I wouldn't be surprised if it was over $500," he said.
"I'm stressed now, every day, just thinking what's going to happen."
That prospect has left the family mulling a move to the country to escape the crunch and give Saffyre a better childhood.
"We don't want her to miss out on everything else because we stayed here," he said.
"Even though the school's good and that, you've got to eat and you've got to have a half-decent life."
But even that might not be enough to escape the pressure, according to Anglicare's data.
"Where people used to perhaps move away from big cities to find cheaper accommodation, that's no longer a viable option at all," Ms Chambers said.
"It is just as expensive in the regions and in rural areas."
Anglicare's data found just six affordable homes across the state for a couple in a similar situation, with three being in the Wheatbelt-Goldfields region.
There were no affordable rentals for singles on JobSeeker, Youth Allowance or the Disability Support Pension, and just five for a single person earning minimum wage.
For a couple with two children, and both earning minimum wage, 15 per cent of rentals or 428 properties were considered affordable.
Letter asks for JobSeeker, rent assistance boost
To address the crisis, Anglicare has proposed a number of solutions including raising the rates of federal government payments like Jobseeker and Commonwealth Rent Assistance.
But the idea was seemingly shot down by federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers who yesterday acknowledged that while it was "tough" to live on JobSeeker, his focus was to "move as many people as we can off that payment and into good, secure, well-paid jobs".
Anglicare also believes more structural changes are needed to the way Australia thinks about its property market, including for governments to build more social housing.
"We really need to stop asking the private rental market to do the heavy lifting, to provide affordable housing," Ms Chambers said.
"It's not designed to do that."
She also called for an end to planned 'stage three' tax cuts, which are legislated to take effect from July 1, 2024.
The changes will lower the tax rate for people earning between $45,001 and $200,000 a year and raise the threshold for the highest personal income tax bracket.
"It siphons money right into the top 20 per cent of income earners," Ms Chambers said.
"It moves [money] away from states like Tasmania, it moves away from rural and regional areas, it moves away from women, moves away from those on lower pay."
She said stopping those cuts would bring $260 billion back into the federal budget over the next 10 years.
The federal government has so far committed to keeping the tax cuts, which were legislated by the former Coalition government.
Call for rent increase cap
Another option both Ms Dowling and Mr Horton support is placing a cap on the amount landlords can raise their rent each year.
The Greens have called for the federal government to go one step further, demanding a two-year rent freeze in exchange for their support of Labor's $10 billion housing fund.
The federal government says that fund is essential to alleviating the country's renting crisis, and has called on the Greens to pass legislation for the fund.
"We have to increase supply because that is what will assist over time with rent and the rental squeeze, so we need to get that bill through the parliament and we need to work with the states and territories on other ideas they have," Finance Minister Katy Gallagher said.
Anglicare's Ms Chambers said prices were so high at the moment even a freeze wouldn't be a "big help", although it would be beneficial.
Mr Horton was also sceptical of the idea, saying the only real hope was for more homes, including social housing, to be built.
For Ms Dowling, she hoped picking up extra work, selling some of her belongings and building her savings while living with a friend might help her down the track.
But at 58, she feels discriminated against in the workplace.
"For a lot of people that's not very appealing, they can hire somebody that's a lot cheaper and a lot younger," she said.
"But I'm not afraid to work hard, and you know, we'll just see what happens."
