Yasmine Van Beem never imagined she’d be at such a loss.
A single mother, she moved back in with her parents during the pandemic after separating from her partner. Now, Van Beem and her daughter are experiencing the weight of Australia’s housing and cost-of-living crisis, living in a share house in Perth.
“This couple had two rooms in their house … and they were wanting someone to move in and make their rent cheaper,” says Van Beem, who pays $400 a week in rent to sublet.
“But … I desperately want to be a family in our own home.”
While share houses used to be synonymous with university days and cheap flats, as rents continue to rise across Australia, they are no longer just student digs.
In December 2022, Van Beem posted on local Facebook groups looking for other single parents to move into a share house with her and her daughter. While the post didn’t proffer a housemate, it did prove she was not alone.
“That post received a lot of attention,” says Van Beem.
“I got so many messages from people that were in the same situation saying that they would be interested … but it’s hard to find a single parent that is wanting or needing the same things.”
While Van Beem is still weighing up the pros and cons of living with another family, rentals on the market are often leased before she can get an inspection. She also feels it is harder to apply for properties as a single income earner.
The director of economic research at PropTrack, Cameron Kusher, says with rents up 19% across Australia, there are more people seeking to share their home..
“During the pandemic, a lot of share houses broke up,” says Kusher.
“If you had a house of five with five people working from home … it wasn’t very feasible to be doing that. If you look at rents in Sydney and Melbourne, they dropped quite a lot during Covid, so there was an opportunity to go and rent yourself a one-bedroom apartment.”
But even as house prices fall, unit rents are rising and fast becoming “restrictive”.
Shortages are widespread and make the market even more competitive, particularly in the capital cities, where the share of affordable properties has more than halved in the last 12 months.
It is in this market, after moving out on his own for the first time about a year ago, that Stewart* found himself advertising his second room in his Melbourne townhouse for sublet in March.
“I [had] liked being around people, but I thought, ‘It’s time for me to have my own space, and my own domain’,” he says.
When his rent went up $50 a week, alongside an increase in internet, gas and electricity bills, he felt “price gouged all of a sudden”.
Initially nervous about finding the right person to share close quarters with, after weighing up the pros and cons of going back to share housing, he has found a housemate.
“I think what I’m going to do is just say, ‘If you’re here on a working holiday visa, and after six months you want to leave, that’s fine.’ I’m trying to make it a cool experience for myself, so it’s something to be excited about.”
He hopes to only have to share for a year or two, and says the change and extra income will be better than “stressing all the time”.
“It’s a nice spot I’m living in, but it feels like I’m in a prison if I can’t do anything,” Stewart says.
As Australians adjust to the new reality the cost-of-living crisis brings, such stress is increasingly common.
REA Group’s Flatmates.com.au saw 68,000 new users sign up in January and Facebook groups see dozens of listings a day.
Australia’s rental crisis is also amplified in rural areas, as rent increases force older Australians facing uncertain financial futures into share houses and rates of homelessness in the regions have risen at double the rate of the state capitals. Also deepening shortages of housing stock is burgeoning short-stay accommodation, which overrun tourist destinations and sow division in local communities.
Recently, Yasmine Van Beem found what she thought was the perfect home, close to her parents and her daughter’s school. As with many properties she had applied to tenant, she was unsuccessful. And at $500 a week, it would have stretched her to her limit.
“It had a brand new kitchen looking out on the back yard … it just had that good feeling. When I walked into it, I was like, ‘Oh yes, finally’,” she says.
“Most of the houses I walk into that are within my budget, I feel like, ‘Oh God, I’m going to have to live here.’ I don’t want to live in a dive. I don’t want that for my daughter.”
*Name has been changed upon request.
