‘Nowhere to escape’: Australian renters face extreme conditions

There are warnings that eight million Aussie renters are facing “threatening” situations, that could even result in deaths.

The extreme heat in Meg Chatterton’s rental was so bad over summer that she was forced to sit inside in the dark all day, a situation that has severely impacted her mental health.

The university student lives in a share house with three others in the Melbourne suburb of Box Hill and said on hot summer days there is “nowhere to escape from the heat”.

“Our house is really badly insulated and there is no airconditioning so the first thing in the morning I shut the windows and curtains to keep the heat out as much as I can,” she told news.com.au.

“Usually during uni time I would be out during the day on campus but most things were online last year, so it would mean sitting inside doing my summer classes in the heat.

“I had to keep the curtains closed and I was sitting in the dark all day and there was no natural light. Being able to see out the window is really important, especially if you’re sitting in front of a computer all day, and I’ve been suffering from depression and it got worst as I would feel a bit isolated all day.”

The 32-year-old said she can’t afford to buy a portable airconditioner as it would drive up electricity bills and she felt powerless to bring up the issue with her landlord.

“We kind of need to pick our battles a bit,” she explained.

“There are things like mould and other stuff falling apart, so its like if they don’t even fix those really important things we don’t feel like they will be open to doing more major upgrades with insulation or airconditioning.”

Meg said her mental health has been worse by her rental conditions. Picture: Supplied

At night, Chatterton and her housemates would avoid cooking and using the kitchen but even at 9pm the house would still be registering 30C temperatures which made it impossible to sleep, she said, making her “irritable” and affecting her focus the next day.

Chatterton was one of 49 Aussie renters who installed temperature monitors in their homes between 1 December and 22 February.

It was part of research into renter’s experience with heat in their homes over the past summer for tenants advocacy organisation Better Renting.

Some tenants recorded temperatures of 37.5C degrees including a Brisbane renter who was living in an apartment built in 2017 that had airconditioning installed, while in the Sydney suburb of Rosemeadow a mum saw the house reach temps of 38C.

Renters in the report described bedrooms feeling “like an oven”, while for others suffering through Covid, fevers were made worse as people were forced to isolate and swelter inside their homes.

Despite a milder summer with more rain and cooler temperatures overall, the Better Renting report called Hot Homes, disturbingly found that homes across Australia routinely exceeded the recommended safe maximum temperature of 25C.

It also revealed that household temperatures across the country registered between 25C and 30C for 38 per cent of the time, while temperatures above 30C were recorded 4 per cent of the time on average.

Houses retaining heat overnight was also a huge problem, with temperatures hot enough to impair sleep 45 per cent of the time.

Extreme temperatures have caused catastrophic bushfires in Australia. Picture: AAP Image/Dean Lewins

It comes as warnings are sounded over the impact of climate change, with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology finding the number of days of extreme heat has increased five-fold in the past 30 years.

Extreme heat is a killer too – causing the death of more people than all other natural disasters put together.

Chatterton and others reported that their house was sometimes hotter than the outside, even if temperatures were milder, with one participant in Melbourne finding his home was 2-4C hotter on the inside compared to outdoors.

Joel Dignam, founder of Better Renting, said the government needs to introduce minimum rental standards that are explicit about safe temperatures, which would make it easier for tenants to request modifications to a home.

“I think what struck me most is just how normalised it has become for people in rentals to just put up with temperatures and conditions that are quite frightful,” he told news.com.au. “The sheer amount of time that rental homes are in threatening temperatures and its affecting so many people – about eight million people rent in Australia – so it’s a big issue.

“In Perth, they had such a hot summer and were seeing three hours a day above 30 degree inside their homes and it’s a bit of warning of what’s to come. We need to be doing something about this now.”

Temperatures in the 40s and high north westerly winds under extreme fire conditions are fanning a number of fires around Sydney. Picture: AAP Image/Dean Lewins

Renters are also in a situation like Chatterton where they feel powerless to get anything changed in their home.

“It’s really tough for renters to address this as they can’t change their homes … and instead they just put up with it,” Dignam said.

“But to make rentals liveable requires governments to take action and requires landlords to make homes decent to live in.”

Climate change was a huge concern as heatwaves happen more often, last longer and temperatures soar even higher, Dignam said, but there was also another big issue looming.

“In Australia, we have a growing number of people renting and these people are becoming older so there are potentially more health concerns if people are retiring as renters,” he said.

“Also living in urban high density areas, which has it benefits, but it means escaping summer heat can be challenging and the signs aren’t positive. But we do have something about this before things get worse.”