Australia Today

This Bed-for-Rent in a Sharehouse Hallway Epitomises Australia’s Housing Crisis

You can now live in a Hobart hallway for just $75 a week!
Gavin Butler
Melbourne, AU
Bed in a hallway
Not the actual bed. Image via Libreshot

Baby boomers are always telling us how Australia’s housing affordability crisis isn’t that bad. Millennials just need to learn how to compromise. Maybe that means going without the avocado on toast or the daily batch brew; maybe it means moving out to the sticks and doing an hour-long commute to work each morning; or maybe it means giving up on certain creature comforts like, say, a bedroom, and settling for a bed in a hallway instead. You know: compromise.

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A rare rental opportunity was posted to Gumtree on Friday offering the aforementioned hallway-bed for the price of $75 a week. The listing, titled “Sharing accommodation for a boy in North Hobart”, claims the tenants are “looking for someone who is interested to stay in the hall.” A single bed is already “there for use”, apparently—in the hall—and the listing sees fit to stress that “it is available”. The successful applicant will be sharing the house with two boys, who live in one bedroom, and a couple, who live in the other.

Now I know what you’re thinking, and yes: the idea of advertising a rental that is in fact just a bed in a thoroughfare of a five-person house is… weird. But according to Tenants Union senior solicitor Ben Bartl, any old space in a property—hallway, cupboard, under-the-stairs crawl space—can be advertised for rent under the Residential Tenancy Act, The Examiner reports.

"It is a double edged sword because there is a huge shortage of rentals and it is not ideal that people are in unsuitable areas such as hallways but we understand a lot of people are having trouble paying their rents," Ben said. "It's probably just the tip of the iceberg.”

Another chunk of that particular rental affordability iceberg is the huge number of international students who are being forced to live in overcrowded houses. As Ben points out, "there are no minimum standards about how many people can live in a house”—and an increasing number of strapped-for-cash tenants are cramming themselves into shared bedrooms in an attempt to knock down the rental price. In a study published earlier this year, The Conversation revealed that “it was not uncommon for two-bedroom apartments [in Sydney] to have between 5 and 14 occupants.”

If the issue is particularly acute in Hobart, it should come as little surprise. Last year, the Tasmanian capital overtook Sydney as Australia’s least affordable city for rent. An increasing demand for short-term holiday accommodation has intensified the market and put strain on residential tenants, according to The Guardian.

"When you've got landlords advertising a bed in a hallway for $75 a week, you know you've got a serious housing crisis and a government that is not taking this serious enough," Cassy O'Connor, leader of the Tasmanian Greens, told The Examiner. "The problem we have is, we have so many people in housing distress that they would be willing to accept this… substandard and depressing option for a home… That's the point we have come to.”

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