Families cram into caravans, tents as South West rental crisis worsens

Couples sleeping in tents, children forced into crisis accommodation and cramming into a small caravan with a family of five. This is the devastating reality for out-of-luck renters hit hardest by the unprecedented fallout of the South West’s rental crisis, which is set to worsen once the State Government COVID-19 moratorium ends. New statistics show the fierce competition to land a rental property, with Busselton named the fastest leasing regional centre in WA as Bunbury travels close behind. The median time to lease a rental in Busselton was 11 days during the three months to February — nine days faster than Perth for the same period and 12 days quicker than it was at the same time last year, according to the Real Estate Institute of WA. Bunbury also recorded below the Perth figure, clocking 16 days compared with Perth’s 20. A family chasing a two-bedroom furnished rental in the Greater Bunbury area will only have nine properties to choose from, two of which are less than $500. Unfurnished would leave them at 95 two-bedroom options, but the situation worsens further south as both Greater Busselton and Margaret River have nine two-bedroom properties available. The latter has just one furnished house listed. Among those in desperate search for a new home is Renee Buswell, who has been looking for a place since July to house her big family, who will now be split up between crisis accommodation and a caravan park for the longest time the family has been apart. “We’re only still here because the moratorium was extended luckily,” she said. Mrs Buswell’s 18-year-old son, his partner and their two young children — 10 and 21 months old — had to move home after being unable to find a rental and will now be staying in youth accommodation, while her 16-year-old daughter is living in crisis accommodation and her 20-year-old will stay with her grandparents. “My husband and I are going to be staying in a tent at a caravan park, but it would be freezing for them to stay so we wanted to get them into youth accommodation,” she said. Mrs Buswell said the family had been struggling to find a new rental in Bunbury even though they had a steady income. “There’s just too many people applying. My husband has been into the real estate to say we don’t care how much it costs, we’ll take something,” she said. “We can’t just uproot our lives here and move somewhere else, especially when our 16-year-old is finishing up school. “Us moving to Busselton to stay in a tent was the only thing we could find, so we’ve just got to make do.” Even though the future seemed grim, Mrs Buswell held her head high and tried to focus on the positives in her life. “I count myself lucky — I have a loving family, we’ve got food, cars, my husband has a steady job,” she said. “I think you’ve got to try to focus on the good or you’ll crumble.” Her experience echoes many trying to find rentals throughout the South West as people frantically prepare for the end of the moratorium on rent rises and evictions on Sunday. In Brunswick an emergency service volunteer and his family of four will soon be living out of a caravan after they were told to vacate their home in favour of new tenants who would be paying a higher rent. The move came as a kick to the guts for Nathan Dawe, who said he was not given the chance to agree to pay the new rental price. The young family has been left scrambling to put their belongings together and find a new home in a market that offers little options within their price range and location. “We’re going to be staying in a small caravan that has just enough space for all of us,” Mr Dawe said. “If we want a home we’d have to shift town and the kids have school and a life here.” The news came after a string of bad luck for the family, which saw them lose 85 per cent of their belongings when their house flooded in October and had both cars written off in the months after. “A lot of people don’t realise how much stress I’m under and how little houses are available,” Mr Dawe said. WA Association for Mental Health chief executive Taryn Harvey said the pressures surrounding housing in the coming months would compound mental health issues for people in private rentals. “The evidence demonstrates there’s some really strong relationships between mental health and housing, so when you have insecure housing and you don’t know how you’re going to keep a roof over your head that impacts on your mental health,” she said. “If you have a pre-existing mental health issue, you then have additional challenges around being able to sustain your housing and potentially compete with others in housing market.” WA’s new Housing Minister John Carey also last week urged landlords to think of their tenants before hiking rents when the rental moratorium ends on Sunday. “I appreciate that landlords want to try and get the best return, but I do ask that they also be sensitive to their tenants,” he said. REIWA president Damian Collins said property investors in the South West were finding tenants for their rentals quicker than any other regional centre in WA. “The speed at which vacant rentals are being tenanted has a lot to do with the reduction of available rental properties in the area due to the rental shortage affecting the State,” he said. “This has caused increased competition among tenants in Busselton and put upwards pressure on the regional centre’s median rent price, which increased by $100 a week to $500 when compared to the three months to February 2020. “There’ll be a migration of people from current rental stock into their owner-occupiers as those houses are completed and that’s going to be particularly noticeable in places like Dunsborough, Bunbury, Busselton, where there was a very good supply of title-vacant land,” he said. “That will free up a lot of rental stock, which will mean the upward pressure on the prices in September may come off.”

Families cram into caravans, tents as South West rental crisis worsens

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