Tailah Dippel sits on her front verandah, anxiously watching the rain clouds roll in.
Rain is the last thing her family needs as they prepare to leave the warmth and comfort of their home.
Their Bundaberg rental is being sold and for six months, Tailah and her partner Daniel have been looking for a new house for their family of five.
Daniel earns a decent wage as a traffic controller and the pair thought they would have no trouble finding a three-bedroom home within their price range of $300 to $450 per week.
But as time wore on, they became increasingly panicked.
"Every single rental that is in our price range, we've been going for," says Tailah.
"They always say when you've got a job, it's security and you're financially better off, but at the moment it doesn't make much of a difference at all."
They approached social housing providers but were ineligible due to Daniel's income. Even the caravan parks were full.
The 25-year-old says her family's only remaining option is to move into a tent.
For the past few weeks, they have been going through the painstaking process of downsizing — selling most of their possessions to buy solar panels, a portable shower and toilet, and other camping essentials.
"The four-year-old has been acting out a little bit — when the guys came over to pick up all the furniture, he was like, 'No, that's my coffee table!'"
The weather has been grey and miserable, and Tailah has stocked up on warm clothing for her seven-month-old son and her stepsons, aged four and 19.
"As long as we can get the set-up right to keep them warm and keep them entertained long enough, I think they'll be alright," she says.
"I'm trying to stay positive."
But as the rain starts to patter down on moving day, the young mum decides to try the local caravan parks one last time, rather than camping by the flood-prone river as planned.
"How many nights?" Asks one caravan park owner over the phone.
"As long as you offer," she replies.
The phone line goes dead.
Anecdotally, there are dozens, likely hundreds, of people in Bundaberg seeking emergency accommodation due to a worsening rental crisis that is gripping regional Australia — and it seems this caravan park has had its fill of desperate phone calls.
Later that morning, the family has a small stroke of luck — one of the parks can offer them a campsite for a fortnight, at a cost of $244 per week.
They waste no time in piling the kids in the car and setting up their tent, but the grass is saturated and puddles immediately begin to form in the corners of their makeshift home.
Tailah drapes a poncho around the four-year-old, who is becoming distressed.
In the face of such an uncertain future, her optimism is fading.
And there is another big complication on the horizon: she is 18 weeks pregnant.
"I'm not actually sure how I'm going to do it."
The weather forecast remains bleak, but she puts on a bright expression as she rounds up the kids for lunch.
"I'm just trying to be happy for them," she says.
"And just having a laugh, because if I don't laugh, I'll cry."
On Thursday, after the ABC published Tailah's story, a Queensland government housing service reached out and has put Tailah and her family up in a motel for two weeks.
Families and pensioners now among the homeless
The housing situation in Bundaberg has reached crisis point, according to long-time local Jasmine Tasker.
She is the operations manager at Angels Community Group — a non-profit that has just opened a support centre for the town's homeless.
At any given time, there are a dozen people using the laundry or shower or having a free meal.
"Growing up, there were maybe one or two homeless people in town, and we knew their names," Ms Tasker says.
"Today is very different. We are having young families, we're having pensioners, we're having people that have jobs — their kids go to school — and they are homeless because of this rental crisis."
Bundaberg Regional Council CEO Steve Johnston told 7.30 the council had supported local forums on the issue but local government was "one small cog in a large wheel".
"We are ready to take an active role in tackling these issues, but any approach will have no meaningful impact unless industry, community, and all levels of government tackle this together," Mr Johnston says.
Rental prices reaching record highs
Kate Colvin works with homeless people in Victoria and is a spokesperson for Everybody's Home — a national campaign seeking solutions to the housing crisis.
She says similar stories are unfolding across the country, particularly in coastal and regional areas which proved popular with wealthy city dwellers seeking a tree or sea change during the pandemic.
Figures from SQM Research show the national rental vacancy rate is 1.1 per cent.
"We think anything below 3 per cent is a tight rental market, so what happens is that someone turns up to rent a property and they are competing with 30, 40 other households for that property," says Ms Colvin.
In most states and territories, rental prices are reaching record highs each quarter.
Nationally, rents have jumped by an average of almost 9 per cent in 12 months, according to the latest Domain data.
In Bundaberg, the average rent increased from $295 to $400 per week over the past year — an increase of 35.6 per cent.
Rents in the NSW coastal haven of Bellingen have jumped by a staggering 42.1 per cent — from $380 to $540 — during the same period.
Ms Colvin says the price hikes are driven by a lack of affordable private rentals and a failure to build enough social housing to keep pace with population growth.
"It's not profitable for investors to create new rentals that will be rented at an affordable rate to someone on a low income," she says.
"So we've got market failure in the private sector, and at the same time, we've got less government investment into social and affordable housing."
A report released on Thursday by UNSW City Futures Research Centre found that social housing was being "rationed" and waitlist times had ballooned to more than a decade due to overwhelming demand and dwindling supply.
More than 433,000 social housing homes needed: AHURI report
When freshly-minted Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gave his victory speech on election night, he gave an emotional nod to his public housing roots, declaring: "I want every parent to be able to tell their child no matter where you live or where you come from, in Australia the doors of opportunity are open to us all."
His Labor government has pledged $10 billion to build 20,000 social housing properties and 10,000 affordable homes over the next five years.
But there are 164,000 households on national social housing waiting lists, and a report published by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) put the social housing shortfall closer to 433,000 properties — after social housing largely slipped from the federal government agenda from 1996 onwards.
"We're very pleased to see the federal government back in the business of social housing growth," Ms Colvin says.
"There's a huge opportunity for this federal government to partner with the states and together to contribute to growing more social housing, because families across the country are really relying on having a property that they can call home."
Watch this story on 7.30 tonight on ABC TV and ABC iview.
