Megan Neal and Ben Morey were excited to move into their East Victoria Park duplex in 2022.
The house was a little run-down, but it was in a great location, and the $400-per-week rent was manageable for such a centrally located place.
Nearly four years later, they’re paying $310 more per week, and the maintenance issues have grown into bigger problems, with water leaking through the roof during rain and mould growing in the laundry.
Despite these issues, the couple, who are both on JobSeeker, wanted to remain in the house. In January, they were told they were being evicted by the end of April.
Now Morey has found work on the east coast, and they’ve decided to uproot their lives to avoid WA’s crushing rental crisis.
“The last rent increase went up to 80 per cent of our income and actually took effect on Christmas Day, which meant that really, without our family kind of looking out for us and lending us money, we really wouldn’t have been able to survive,” Neal said.
The maintenance issues at the house had grown into bigger problems
“I’ve not been feeling very well for a long time. It’s really hard to live in a place that I know is probably making us sick, and the stress of every week trying to figure out how we’re going to afford anything is like just constant stress and fear,” Neal said.
Neal and Morey raised the affordability and maintenance issues at their rental with Consumer Protection in December, which Neal believed contributed to their lease not being renewed.
Neal was one of 732 respondents to the WA Greens’ renters’ rights survey conducted earlier this year, which painted a dire picture of the state’s rental market.
More than 70 per cent of respondents said they were currently renting because they couldn’t afford to buy a home and thought they never would.
Nearly 72 per cent said their rent was unaffordable, and 67 per cent said their rent increased at their last renewal.
Of those 24 per cent said it went up by more then $50 per week.
Nearly 63 per cent of respondents said they had their lease terminated at least once through no fault of their own.
Nearly 30 per cent said they saw their rental being listed afterwards for more than they were paying.
Greens housing spokesman Tim Clifford said the Cook government needed to do more to help the 700,000 renters in WA, like by introducing a permanent cap on rent increases and banning no-grounds evictions.
“More than 80 per cent of renters who responded to our survey are experiencing financial stress directly related to the cost of housing, and for more than two-thirds of WA renters it is literally too expensive to rent and too expensive to save for a house; they’re stuck between a rock and a hard place,” he said.
“Rents across WA have increased by more than 66 per cent in the last five years, more than triple the amount wages have risen. This is completely unsustainable.
“How is it that in a state as rich as Western Australia, so many people in the community can barely afford housing or are forced to make the tough decision to go without other necessities to ensure they don’t become homeless.”
Real Estate Institute WA states show the average home rental has jumped from $375 in 2020 to $730 this year. The median unit rental cost has jumped from $340 to $700 in the same period.
Neal said the government needed to introduce some form of rent stabilisation.
“Because at the moment, landlords can increase the rent however much they want, even if they know that we can’t pay it,” she said.
“I think there definitely needs to be an end to no-grounds evictions so that they can’t throw people out as they did us.”
The survey came as the REIWA revealed the vacancy rate in Perth continued to drop from 2.2 per cent in February to 2 per cent in March.
REIWA President Suzanne Brown said recent media coverage about mooted changes to the capital gains tax, as well as the Cook government weighing up a no-grounds eviction ban, was spooking property investors, which would further impact supply.
“Adequate supply is key to a healthy rental market, and in WA we rely on investors to provide over 86 per cent of private rental supply,” she said.
“The ongoing speculation around these potential changes is causing a lot of uncertainty for investors, and our members are now reporting some investors are pulling out of the market to put their money into more stable assets.”
The no-grounds eviction scuttlebutt came from Anglicare WA, which said recently it understood the Cook government was considering a ban.
On Tuesday, Cook did not dismiss the reports but said his government was considering a range of tenancy law reform propositions at the moment.
“We always said that there was going to be further tranches of reforms in relation to that area,” he said.
Cook said the upcoming May budget would “be a housing budget”.
“It will be a budget which continues to focus on our priorities of jobs, health and housing, and so there won’t be any surprises in relation to that,” he said.
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Hamish Hastie is WAtoday’s state political reporter and the winner of five WA Media Awards, including the 2023 Beck Prize for best political journalism.Connect via X or email.