When Sylvia Massara's marriage broke down, she moved out of the family home and into a rental.
It's been a big adjustment for the 61-year-old Sydneysider, who now lives in a charity-run housing estate.
"It's a bit of a shock because the way that I look at it, this is the last place that I'm going to live before I die," Ms Massara told The Drum.
Like many Australians, she's also experiencing housing stress as rents soar beyond expectations.
Rent set to go up 10 per cent at Sylvia's charity-run housing estate
Each year the property manager of the housing estate Ms Massara lives in raises the annual lease fee on par with inflation – which should be around 7 per cent this year.
But the fee has spiked by 10 per cent.
"They will have a meeting with the residents, and we have to vote on whether we think [the fee increase] is fair or not," Ms Massara says.
"A lot of people that live here don't have any savings, they're just on the age pension.
"I still have some savings, but I'm not on a pension – so I have to make the savings last."
Inner city landlords pushing for increases of up to 30 per cent
Australia's incredibly tight rental market tightened even further in April, according to the latest PropTrack Market Insight report.
PropTrack is a division of the REA Group, which is an online real estate advertising company.
The report found the number of new rental listings on realestate.com.au nationally was down 18.9 per cent month-on-month in April, the largest decline since 2017.
The total rental stock, the report added, remains significantly lower than at the start of the pandemic in both capital cities (down 40.2 per cent) and regional areas (down 36.1 per cent).
Analysts at CoreLogic, a property market data crunching firm, say it's clear many Australians are under significant stress.
"The real challenge for renters is this is occurring at a time when their cost of living pressures are extraordinarily high, meaning they're getting stretched from both sides both in terms of accommodation and the cost of necessities," head of research, Tim Lawless says.
Its data show some inner-city landlords are pushing for rental price increases of up to 30 per cent, and suburban rental vacancy rates have dropped to as low as 0.4 per cent.
"The current situation we're seeing where rents are rocketing higher is very different to the norm, and it's caused by an undersupply of rental accommodation against this backdrop of very high rental demand," Mr Lawless explains.
"So, this is a situation that hasn't come out of the blue – but is going to be quite hard to fix."
The government's response to the housing crisis includes the multi-billion-dollar Housing Australia Future Fund, which is stalled in the Senate.
Rent takes up more than half Karen's income
Karen Stubbs has seen first-hand what happens when those on very low incomes run out of money after battling rising costs of living.
The 64-year-old lives in Goolwa, which sits near the Murray Mouth in South Australia.
"We're getting more and more homelessness here, we've got people sleeping up in the dunes," she says.
"It's heartbreaking, it kills me."
Ms Stubbs receives a disability pension from the federal government and lives in low-cost accommodation – but rent takes up just over half of her income.
She says she wants to see more alternative solutions to the national housing crisis, like more "tiny houses" especially for pensioners.
Meanwhile, Ms Massara worries her savings will run out before she qualifies for the age pension.
"I may not have enough money to get to that point – you never know what happen with emergencies – anything can happen at any time to anybody, irrespective of age, or whether they're employed or not," Ms Massara says.
"So, you just keep the money in the bank – and hope to hell that you're not going to have any emergencies."
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