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Low income Victorians are being priced out of the rental market, with none of more than 20,000 properties listed at the start of the month appropriate and affordable for recipients of Youth Allowance.
Anglicare Victoria’s 2016 Rental Affordability Snapshot found rent consumed more than 70 percent of the $216.60 weekly payments, leaving less than $50 a week for other expenses.
Affordable rent was defined as being less than 30 percent of the household’s total budget.
Listings that involved sharing a room with unknown persons were deemed inappropriate.
La Trobe University Bendigo equity and diversity manager Shannon Kerrigan said financial stress was one of the most common reasons students contacted the department.
“It ends up being the overall cost of living,” she said. “Often students will pay the rent first and the other things come later.
”We attempt to help students in dire circumstances but we don’t often find out about them – students often struggle by.”
Housing Justice, run by ARC Justice in Bendigo, provides advice, advocacy and case management.
“A high proportion of the clients the service assists are on government benefits,” manager Mim Dineen said.
Anglicare Victoria found rent in Victoria was unaffordable in most households receiving income support payments, with youth allowance recipients on the lowest income.
The report ranked Greater Bendigo as offering more affordable and appropriate rentals than all but two of the 14 regional municipalities surveyed – Greater Geelong topped the list, with Ballarat in second.
DCK Real Estate director Josie Stewart said the cost of rent had dropped in recent years because vacancy rates were higher.
But Haven Home Safe chief executive officer Ken Marchingo said the market remained “extremely difficult” for single pensioners and young people.
He supported Anglicare Victoria’s calls for more state-funded out-of-home care for young people up to 21, instead of 18; greater government investment in targeted social and public housing; and more incentives for people on income support in the private rental market.
Mr Marchingo also applauded the state government’s commitment to providing more housing for victims of family violence.