More Hunter workers are facing financial stress simply keeping a roof over their head, a new analysis has found.
A Hunter worker earning the median national income, according to latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data, takes home around $1100 each week in wages.
They will spend more than half of that amount on rent.
For the same worker to avoid facing housing stress - or spending more than 30 per cent of their income on rent - they would have to earn more than $700 more each week.
The findings come from a national coalition of housing and welfare organisations, and reveal renters are giving up weeks of their working year just to afford a place to live.
Everybody's Home's Priced Out report, released on Monday, August 24, shows middle-income earners are now being squeezed out of the housing market.
Lower income earners were increasingly priced out altogether.
Even households earning a combined income of $80,000 to $110,000 annually were feeling the pinch, the data shows.
"Rents have been running away for years with the pain spreading well beyond people on low incomes," Mary Azize, of the Everybody's Home coalition, said.
"Essential workers, professionals, and even those on six-figure salaries are finding it harder to pay the rent right across the country."
Ms Azize said the problem's full brunt was no longer confined to metropolitan suburbs.
"In capital cities and most regional areas, people on the lowest incomes would have to spend the majority of their income on rent. Middle income earners are losing well over a third of their income to rent in most areas," she said.
"Regional Australia is no longer a rental refuge, and in many areas, rents are now pricier there than in capital cities."
The findings come as the NSW Council of Social Services (NCOSS) reported in June that runaway cost-of-living increases were reshaping the experience of poverty.
The council's annual Voices of Poverty Research report found that one in three surveyed homes in poverty had been pushed below the poverty line in only recent years.
More than half of the households experiencing poverty were reported to be in extreme housing stress, the report revealed, a 33 per cent increase since 2023.
Last month, as new Consumer Energy Report data revealed more than half the country's households were reluctant to heat or cool their homes out of concern for energy prices.
NCOSS CEO Cara Varian said residents were being forced choose between basic needs.
"We shouldn't be in a situation where people must make the difficult choice between paying their rent or mortgage, heating or cooling their homes or putting food on the table," she said.
"Many people in poverty cannot afford their everyday needs, and unfortunately that means an increasing number of people are compromising their well-being to survive day-to-day."
Median rent, tracked by the NSW Department of Communities and Justice, remained steady at $750 in the June quarter for the Greater Metropolitan Area that encompasses Sydney, the Central Coast, Lake Macquarie and the Lower Hunter, to Port Stephens.
The figure exceeded the state median by about $30 each week, and the median for areas outside the city and major regional centres by more than $200.
According to the Priced Out reports findings, renters or households in the Hunter would need to earn at least $130,000 annually to avoid falling into housing stress.
Earners bringing in up to $70,000 faced spending more than half of their income on rent alone. In a list of the 20 most unaffordable areas for renters, residents earning $40,000 annually could spend almost all of it on rent, ranking it seventh.
"These are weeks worth of income that can no longer go towards groceries, energy bills, healthcare, childcare or other essentials. Renters aren't paying more for a bigger or better home. They are giving up more of their working year to live in the same home they were renting a year earlier or one that's worse," Ms Azize said.
"We are in this rental crisis because of decades of governments walking away from public and community housing. These are the homes that don't price out renters, and they're the homes that private developers won't build.
"The solution is actually pretty simple. The federal government needs to build public and community homes at scale. Australia needs nearly one million of these homes within the next 15 years."
"While we wait for more public and community housing, the federal government needs to work with states and territories to limit rent increases, improve rental standards, and make sure those on the lowest incomes have enough money to live.
"The federal government has shown that it can take action to help people buy their first home, now it must help everyone afford to rent one."
