Victorian teen forced to drop out of Year 12 amid rental crisis

A Victorian teen who loved school has been forced to drop out in her final year after her family was rejected from more than 100 rental homes.

A Victorian Year 12 student has made the decision to pull out of her final year of school due to the “immense” stress her family is facing as they struggle to find a place to live.

The family from Sebastian near Bendigo have lived in their current rental for 17 years but that will come to end in September after the house was sold.

Mother Janelle said she had applied for more than 100 new rental homes without luck and the family now was at risk of living in a tent.

“The stress level is just unbelievable,” she told Today on Thursday morning.

Janelle said their mental health was suffering and her daughter, Mackenzie, had to pull out of school in her final year.

The teenager said she “really enjoyed” school the first half of the year but term three had become too much with everything going on at home.

Mackenzie and Janelle will have no where to live if they do not secure a rental property within a month. Picture: Today

Mackenzie said she felt like she couldn’t escape the pressure.

“You can’t get away from it anymore,” she said, explaining that she was dealing with the stress of exams and then coming home to pack or go look at a new rental.

“There’s so much stress that you don’t really see.”

The number of potential renters per listing on realestate.com.au increased 20.3 per cent in the year to June, according to PropTrack.

Tight supply has seen rental prices increase 11.4 per cent in regional areas during that time.

In June, new rental listings across capital cities were 9 per cent lower than the decade average and in regional markets, they were 26.4 per cent lower.

In June, new rental listings in regional markets were 26 per cent lower than the decade average.

Ray Ellis, former director of the Real Estate Institute of Australia and First National Real Estate chief executive, has warned things are only going to get worse when it comes to the rental crisis Australia is facing.

“This is a genuine crisis. It doesn’t matter where you are in Australia, there is no rental stock available,” he said, adding that as “migration picks up again, it’s going to get even worse”.

“Australia is just not building enough houses for us to live in, let alone to be rented.”

He said state governments must urgently take responsibility for the immediate need for more social housing to remove pressure on the private sector.

“Between 1955 and 1964, state governments built about 140,000 social houses. We’ve never built that amount again,” Mr Ellis said.

He added that significant lags on new private developments largely hindered by “bureaucracy” also meant it was taking several years before construction could even begin.