In 2020, homelessness support service BeyondHousing provided support for more than 650 families - nearly 40 per cent more than the year before and more than they ever had before.
This year, with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic lingering, BeyondHousing chief executive Celia Adams is expecting Shepparton's housing crisis squeeze to become even tighter.
Housing prices have risen at record rates in the past 12 months in a boom Shepparton real estate industry veterans say is unprecedented; rental prices have surged with them.
As of February 2021, the median rental price for a two-bedroom house in Shepparton was $280 a week, while the median rental price for all properties was $330 a week.
Ms Adams said the rental squeeze was pricing people out of the bottom end of the market, meaning people in social housing couldn't break into the rental market.
In turn, she said that meant people in crisis accommodation couldn't transition into social housing, leaving crisis accommodation programs full.
“Inevitably what happens is those who are most vulnerable on the lowest income have the littlest room to move or negotiate,” Ms Adams said.
“There are so few properties which are affordable to them.”
She said searches her team conducted had shown no affordable accommodation available to a single person on JobSeeker through the winter of 2020.
House prices are predicted to continue rising in 2021 and 2022, and the prospect of that squeezing the rental market, combined with a lifting of moratoriums on evictions, paints a grim picture of what's to come in 2021.
“I think it's just really sad,” Ms Adams said.
“I can put a whole stack of fancy words around it, but actually it's just heartbreaking.
“There are a lot of stereotypes about the people who access our services, and I'd suggest a number of that increase is from people who wouldn't have traditionally accessed our services in the past.
“They're the people who've had incomes affected by COVID and found themselves in situations they wouldn't have found themselves in before.”
She said the state government's $5.4 billion social housing plan would go a long way to helping alleviate chronic housing stress, but that it was still four years down the line before it paid dividends.
While more access to support services, being aware of competition in the rental market and prolonging financial support to those at risk of homelessness would help in the meantime, Ms Adams said there was one clear solution.
“You can't solve homelessness without housing,” Ms Adams said.
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