Australia’s housing crisis laid bare as single mums reveal their desperate efforts to keep a roof over their families’ heads
Two single mothers from Australia talk about the anxiety they experience as the housing market becomes too expensive.
Kaitlyn Bailey, mother of three, and Anna, mother of two, have both faced challenges finding a rental or buying a home, despite neither living in Sydney.
And they are not alone in this struggle. More and more Australians are struggling to find a roof over their families’ heads as the nationwide housing crisis deepens.
Kaitlyn Bailey applied for 157 rental properties in the NSW Hunter Valley, but was repeatedly denied.
“I’m not a (bad tenant), I keep the house clean, always pay the bills and have never had any problems,” she told 60 Minutes.
She continued to apply after each application was rejected, out of “sheer determination” to ensure she and her children stayed off the streets.
“I don’t want to be homeless with all my children,” Mrs. Bailey said.
Mrs Bailey said the only way she was able to keep a roof over their heads was through an extraordinary sacrifice from her mother Karen.
Kaitlyn (left), a single mother of three, revealed she was rejected 157 times for rental applications and only found a home thanks to her mother Karen (right) who tapped into her pension fund
Karen previously drew on her pension fund and took out a new loan to purchase a portable home for her daughter on the back property of her own property.
Although the family enjoys the closeness, mother and daughter agree that the situation is far from ideal.
They also believe that intergenerational living will become much more common.
“Families are being brought back together out of necessity,” Karen told the program.
Ms Bailey added: ‘Everyone has to survive at the end of the day. And that’s very difficult these days.’
Assistant Director Anna from the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, also attended the program.
She earns a decent salary and has almost scraped together enough money to realize her ‘dream’ of owning her own home.
However, her 15 percent down payment has not yet been approved because she is “a single mother with two dependent children.”
“It doesn’t feel good when you work so hard,” she said.
“I work so hard to achieve this goal… There’s nothing else I can do.”
Mother of two Anna is also being hit hard by a brutal housing market, unable to get a mortgage with a 15 percent deposit because she is a single mother.
Ms Bailey and Anna are just two of many Australians struggling to find a place to live as the population grows and demand for housing soars.
A year ago, the federal government pledged to build 1.2 million new homes over the next five years to ease pressure on demand and lower prices.
However, the promise has turned into an uphill battle, with the construction sector bearing the brunt of the cost of living crisis, with dozens of companies going bust.
New federal Housing Minister Claire O’Neil admitted that achieving that target will not be easy.
“A lot of what the government is doing will provide a good revenue stream for Australian construction companies as we try to build more homes,” she told the program.
More and more Australians are struggling to find a roof over their families’ heads as the national housing crisis worsens.
“I see builders rising to the challenge and thinking about new ways they might be able to help us.”
Ms O’Neil acknowledged there were concerns that younger Australians were having to borrow an average of $92,000 from the “bank of mum and dad” to get a mortgage.
“It’s a huge problem and I think it’s a symptom of a wider collapse in our housing market in Australia, when you have young people having to borrow these amounts of money from their parents,” she said.