A woman with cancer will be homeless because she is a casual worker and cannot afford to pay her rent. A panel-beater for 40 years says his family will become homeless because waiting lists for housing are too long. People spend $700 a week to live in houses where power points electrocute them. One woman’s rent has gone up $100 a week in the last six months. Families send their children to school from cars, while others live in their cars to heat themselves. People live on the streets.
These are some of the grim stories St John’s Care (an Anglican emergency relief organisation) encounters every day in Canberra — the least affordable jurisdiction to rent in Australia, according to the Anglicare Rental Affordability Snapshot, published today.
“The system is failing,” says Jason Haines, managing director of St John’s Care, says.
More than a third of Australians now rent, and many will live in rentals for most of their lives, even once they retire. But rental affordability has halved: two decades ago, it took 20 per cent of median income to purchase average rent; now it takes 43 per cent.
Anglicare CEO Kasy Chambers says the private rental market “really is broken”.
On the weekend of 14 to 15 March, there were no affordable or appropriate properties in Canberra for households that rely on any form of income support.
Out of the 49,000 properties the snapshot captured nationally, only one property — a room in a share house — was affordable for a single JobSeeker recipient. Zero for Youth Allowance recipients. Less than 1 per cent for age pensioners.
A single adult earning the minimum wage could only afford one property (0.1 per cent of listings). The national figure is 0.5 per cent.
A ‘normal’ family — two parents, both working full-time, earning a minimum wage, with two children, receiving Commonwealth Rent Assistance and Family Tax Benefit — could not afford even 5 per cent of properties in Canberra. Nationally, such a family can only afford 14 per cent of properties. A decade ago, they could have afforded 25 per cent.
“Normal is no longer enough,” Ms Chambers said. “It’s not enough to work. It’s not enough to have that income. If you’re living in a private rental market, you’re going to be struggling in terms of that rent and you’re going to be struggling in terms of food security.”
Anglicare’s Snapshot shows that the sustained pressure on the ACT rental market is systemic. Vacancy rates have been at below 1 per cent for years, while general applicants wait longer than five years for public housing. Anglicare suggests that slow rent growth shows households have reached the limits of affordability, rather than affordability meaningfully improving. Housing costs consume an unsustainable share of household budgets for many.
Rising fuel prices make transport and everyday expenses higher — and lower-cost housing is often far from services or workplaces.
“People spend way more than an affordable part of their income on rent,” Ms Chambers said. “People go without other things because the rent has to be paid first. Nutritious food goes out the window. Heating isn’t turned on. Transport can’t be taken.”
The ACT has some of Australia’s strongest renter protections, but Anglicare says these safeguards cannot compensate for the severe lack of affordable rental supply, or create access for households already locked out of the market.
Samara’s story
Samara’s family is facing their third move in three years; she has 44 days to find a new home.
A former APS-6, she left because of bullying; she describes herself as too able to get disability support, but too disabled to be able. The family relies on her husband’s income, while one child has multiple disabilities and needs care.
She is often one of 20 applicants at house inspections.
“We’re all seeing each other repeatedly at the same houses, and the prices are $1,500 a fortnight,” she said. “It’s getting ridiculous. It’s beyond a joke. And I can’t afford this. We can’t afford to live.
“Yesterday, I inspected this $750 a week house in the south of Canberra. The house was in disrepair, unsafe, shared yard access, no privacy, dilapidated kitchen, stained carpets. They’re asking the median price.”
Even applying for rentals is confronting, she says: applicants are pressured to hand over deeply personal information simply to compete for a home.
“That’s not choice. It’s pressure. Housing shouldn’t come at the cost of dignity.”
Jess’s story
Jess is a university student: her JobSeeker payment, including Rental Assistance and an energy supplement, comes to just over $1,000 a fortnight — but her rent is $1,000 a fortnight.
“I have approximately $24 left over at the end of the fortnight to spend on groceries or medical needs or anything else, in which case I have to work to make sure I can afford to live and be alive.
“But I can’t work too much, because I have a full-time study, and that is exhausting. If I don’t focus on my studies, then I fail my classes and I draw my course out even more. Second, you can only work so much on JobSeeker, but the rate is too low.
“I am not an outlier. I am just an average person on JobSeeker, and everyone else on Centrelink payments … are all struggling.
“I just can’t understand why we live in a system where people have to struggle for what is a basic human need. It’s a human right. We all have the right to housing. Our government signed off on human rights, and yet we are seeing people homeless. We are seeing people spend the majority of their income.
“It’s not OK. Australia paints itself as a developed nation, but the lowest of the low are struggling so much, and in 2026 that just doesn’t feel like it’s good enough.
Federal budget: Reform needed
The federal budget, which will be released on 12 May, is expected to reform capital gains tax and negative gearing. Ms Chambers is “ecstatic” about the prospect.
Adjusting capital gains tax would be a ‘trifecta’, she said: the government would make savings to the budget; make the tax system more fair and transparent; and could then spend that money on housing.
Currently, the rental market is severely skewed towards landlords, she thinks.
“Most of those landlords have just done what the taxation system has incentivised them to do. It is absolutely time to change that taxation system.
“We need to have a conversation in Australia that housing and the private rental market is about housing [as a human right], not private investor wealth … [or] a way for individuals to work on their superannuation.
“It’s very hard to send your kids to school if you’re doing that from a car. (I can’t imagine living in a car in Canberra — we know how cold it gets here.) It’s difficult to manage your health if you’re doing that from a rental that has mould. It’s difficult to manage your mental health if you don’t know when the rents are going to go up next, and you don’t know how much by. It’s difficult to know when to enrol your child in next year’s school if you don’t know where you’re going to be next year. Those things just don’t operate for a third of society.”
The government must build social housing to alleviate the burden on the private rental market, Anglicare insists.
“The private rental market tends not to build the types of houses in the types of places that many people need,” Ms Chambers said. “We need the government to take up its rôle again in that essential service of housing.
“We’ve been asking [private landlords] to do the heavy lifting in terms of affordable housing, whereas the tax system is telling them this is a way to gain private wealth and to pad up for their own retirement. It’s just not working.”
She thinks the government should also increase welfare payments, which Anglicare believes is inadequate: JobSeeker is less than half the poverty line.
“We all talk about the cost of living, but inflation does not affect people equally; it affects people on low incomes way more than those people who have more padding in their budget.”
Community sector responds
The community sector echoed Anglicare’s calls for reform.
Housing advocacy peak body ACT Shelter’s CEO, Corinne Dobson, said the Snapshot “lays bare a housing system that is structurally failing people on low incomes who are being priced out of secure housing altogether.
“This is not a short-term market fluctuation — it is the predictable outcome of decades of underinvestment in social housing and an overreliance on a private rental market that is not designed to meet the needs of those most at risk. With cost-of-living pressures continuing to rise and economic conditions likely to further entrench inequality, housing stress will only deepen unless governments act with genuine urgency and conviction.”
Dr Devin Bowles, CEO of ACTCOSS, said: “This report shows that the housing situation is untenable for a significant proportion of Canberrans, including thousands in full time work. Many Canberrans are permanently locked out of the private rental market, never mind home ownership.”
“When secure housing is out of reach for so many, it weakens the fabric of our whole community. People are isolated by housing insecurity, and can’t form the neighbourhood bonds that used to be so important to our sense of belonging.”
Both Shelter and ACTCOSS called for more government investment in social housing as a priority.
“Canberra simply lacks the supply of housing for people on low and moderate incomes that it needs,” Dr Bowles said. “Increasing the supply of public and community housing must be a priority for both levels of government in the ACT.” In his view, the government should increase the pace of constructing and purchasing housing to reflect rising demand, including through population growth.
Ms Dobson also insists that governments at all levels must substantially and urgently expand investment in social and affordable housing “to reverse the long-term decline and ensure housing is treated as a fundamental right, and not as a vehicle for wealth accumulation. Our housing system is a policy choice, and the current trajectory is leaving too many people without a safe, secure place to live.”
Ms Dobson said the ACT Government must immediately restore and properly scale the Rent Relief Fund — cancelled last year — as “a critical first line of defence for renters at risk of homelessness”.
Dr Bowles said that halving the capital gains tax discount and ending negative gearing, which he says would generate around $20 billion in revenue in the first four years alone.
“Federally, the policy experiment of allowing massive capital gains tax discounts and negative gearing on investment properties has clearly failed because it hasn’t met its primary goal of creating enough housing. Instead, its increased pressure on the housing market and is locking millions out of home ownership.”
