Emma Lenz, 42, moved into a converted school bus earlier this year after being priced out of the rental market in Warwick, a small town about 130 kilometres south-west of Brisbane in the Southern Downs region.
"My rent in Sydney was $450 per week and I could not afford any more than that - it was sort of killing me," she said. However, things started to go south when treechangers moving to regional Queensland during the pandemic put pressure on the local housing supply and rents started to rise."They put the rent up and didn't even give me the option to pay the higher amount, they just kicked me out.""I moved in the next day and they charged me $420 per week - it wasn't even clean."
According to the latest Rental Affordability Index report, released last November by National Shelter-SGS Economics and Planning, regional Queensland is now the most unaffordable place to rent a home in Australia. When the family first moved to Warwick and were paying $250 per week, or around $13,000, real estate agents were not too concerned about a renter's income, Lenz said."I feel like if your household income is less than about $70,000 a year, you can't even apply," she said.
Lenz was given an old caravan by an elderly couple, which she and her children slept in for a while, before friends started up an online fundraiser for her.