NO END IN SIGHT TO HOUSING WOE

BELINDA Curtis is one of hundreds of Tasmanians under extreme housing stress and wondering how and when they might get stable accommodation.

Ms Curtis is currently living with her daughter on Bruny Island and couch surfing with mates when in Hobart, but she knows that is not a longterm solution to her housing problems.

She cannot afford to rent privately and the queue for public housing has blown out. It wasn’t always that way. Ms Curtis had a place but lost work during COVID19 and ended up outlaying everything she earned just keeping that roof over her head until she could not hold on any more.

“I am in a Catch 22 situation,” she said. “I trained as a disability support worker but cannot get the hours because I do not have stable accommodation, but I can’t get stable accommodation because I cannot get the hours. I am chasing my tail and it is exhausting and demoralising.

“I’m now on JobSeeker (just over $600 a fortnight) and just cannot afford a private rental of any kind.

“People have told me to get rid of my pets and move into a share house. I’m now in my 40s and would rather be homeless and camp out than have to do that.”

Franklin MP Alison Standen said with rents increasing by 37 per cent in Tasmania over the last five years the state now had a rental crisis.

“And remember the rents quoted are median rents. I know an older woman on the Eastern Shore paying $550 a week and eating through her savings,” Ms Standen said.

“Pensioners are being forced to move in with others, shift workers are sleeping in their cars between shifts to save on petrol — it is a crisis.”