We rely on them to keep Brisbane running. But can they afford to live here?

“I’m hustling,” says Lauren Thomson. “It’s really exhausting.”

Thomson is among the essential workers in Brisbane who cannot afford to rent a one-bedroom unit on their own, as the city’s rental squeeze continues.

The 32-year-old, known as Loz, is a mature-aged apprentice at one of Brisbane’s premier barber shops.

Lauren ‘Loz’ Thomson speaks with a customer at Esquire Male Grooming in Brisbane’s CBD.Credit: Markus Ravik

“I work all week here,” she says, referring to Esquire Male Grooming in Tattersall’s Arcade. “And then I work as a carer on a Saturday, looking after a young man with a disability.”

That is her means of affording to rent an apartment in Albion, in Brisbane’s inner-north, which she shares with a friend.

“I was willing to rent an average studio apartment on my own, but that was going to be $400-$500 a week and I really didn’t want to spend half my wage on rent alone,” she said.

Hairdressers, education aides and child carers are the professionals most likely to struggle to pay the rent in Brisbane.

An average childcare worker who lives alone in metropolitan Brisbane would have to fork out as much as 40 per cent of their income on rent for a median-priced one-bedroom apartment, analysis of income data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows.

Receptionists, cleaners, sales assistants and hospitality workers living on their own in a one-bedroom unit would not fare much better.

Housing stress is usually defined as a household spending more than 30 per cent of its income on rent.

Research by the “Everybody’s Home” campaign group showed renters in Brisbane were paying $199 per week more to rent a unit, and $259 more to rent a house, compared to the beginning of 2020.

“Essential workers are increasingly being priced out of renting near their workplaces and the absence of these workers in our communities affects all of us,” Everybody’s Home said.

The group is among those calling for social housing criteria to be expanded to support more people, so it is “not just a safety net for people on the lowest incomes”.

The national rental affordability index released last month showed it was unaffordable for the average household to rent in every city outside the ACT, the one jurisdiction in Australia where a rent cap has been implemented. According to the index, not a single Brisbane suburb was “affordable”.

Housing researcher Dr Adam Crowe from Curtin University said more people were being forced to rent long-term.

“We have a significant portion of the population that 10 to 20 years ago would have been able to move into home ownership. But now, they are living in the rental sector a lot longer,” he said.

“And, if you’re on less than $100,000 a year income and you’re a single-income household you’re going to struggle to find anything affordable.

He said Brisbane, like Sydney and Melbourne, was becoming a city where “if you are on that moderate to middle income it’s becoming very difficult to chose where you want to live and the quality of your home as well”.

“It’s aggravating, it’s frustrating, and it shows where we place our values as a society.”

He said creating housing diversity in established suburbs and better utilising middle-ring suburbs was key to providing more affordable homes.

The new LNP state government has promised to build 53,500 social and affordable homes by 2044 and also committed to opening up approvals for church and charity land to be used for social homes, potentially providing another 10,000 by 2044.

Thomson’s boss and owner of Esquire Male Grooming, Mark Rabone, empathises with his apprentice. The 53-year-old barber estimates that just under 50 per cent of his income goes to paying the rent.

Mark Rabone and his apprentice Lauren Thomson at Esquire Male Grooming.Credit: Markus Ravik

Two years ago, he sold the Gold Coast hinterland acreage where he lived with his family to be closer to “civilisation”, but found he was not in a position to buy in a beachside suburb.

“It’s not a lot of fun,” he said of renting.

“We’ve just moved for the third time. After the first year, the landlord was intending to build. We then moved to a smaller place ... and after a year [there] the landlords have moved back.”

Rabone said he was looking to exit the rental market as soon as he could.

“It’s not fun and it’s so expensive to have to move again. There’s not a lot out there and [places] get snapped up so quickly.”

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