Families hit hard as rent crisis bites
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MATT and Tracy Bohman are living in limbo, uncertain whether to unpack boxes or even put up a Christmas tree.
The Bohmans are one of many families caught up in an extraordinarily tight rental market, in which there is heavy competition for the handful of properties that become available.
The family that includes five children has been looking for new accommodation for nearly five months after being asked to leave its rented home in Sanctuary Point by October 16 so the owner could carry out renovations.
Mrs Bohman said while she had applied for anything and everything that was suitable, so far she had been unsuccessful.
“There’s always so much competition for any house you apply for,” she said.
“It seems like we come up second best on everything,” added Mr Bohman, who works full-time as a dairy hand.
Unable to find any new accommodation, the family is still in the house it was supposed to leave more than six weeks ago, with the landlord allowing them to stay but increasing the rent by $50 a week.
“We said that we would pay it because we just had nowhere else to go,” Mrs Bohman said.
She said the rent rise stretched the household budget a bit, however moving to another home could stretch it even further because many four bedroom homes in the Sanctuary Point area were fetching up to $400 per week.
Ironically, couples with just one child were often applying for four bedroom homes, Mrs Bohman said, and she feared preference was being given to smaller families that did not really need the room.
Facing a similar battle is another family with five children, Ryan and Nicole Herbert of Tomerong.
Mrs Herbert brought her husband and children back to the area six years ago to be closer to ageing parents, but in recent months they have been unable to find any alternative to staying with family.
“At the moment we’re just glad we’ve got a roof over our heads, but as time goes on the stress factor is going through the roof,” Mrs Herbert said.
“It’s a nightmare.”
Mrs Herbert has attended inspections where there were 20 other people looking at the same time and applied for many homes, only to be rejected.
She has even been called a dole bludger at one real estate agency, because her husband has been unable to work since being injured in a workplace accident several years ago.
Mrs Herbert said the situation was so bad she faced the prospect of packing up and moving to Queensland.
