Singles struggle to afford housing as cost of living rises

By her 70s, Louise Taylor had hoped her house would be more than a roof over her head, but somewhere she could happily call home.

But after "knockback after knockback" when she was trying to find a rental on the private market five years ago, she has been forced to accept her small duplex, north of Brisbane, is all she can afford.

"I was at desperate times and I went, 'you know what, I don't care, I just have to do it,'" she recollected.

"I was so grateful … then I'm looking around thinking, 'how in the hell am I going to … where am I going to put my lounge room?'"

Ms Taylor is the first to acknowledge she is one of the lucky ones and says she's on the housing waitlist and has contacted other housing organisations to see if they could help.

But on the pension, she is fearful about what the next rent rise will mean, and says if it gets any more expensive, she believes she will have no choice but to move in with her adult daughter.

She is also scared that if she cannot afford to rent a house on her own, she may have no choice but to move into a share house.

Ms Taylor believes she would have had more success finding a rental and more power on the private rental market if she was applying in a couple.

Singles tax costing people hundreds of dollars a month

That concept is known as the singles tax – the idea that single-income households do not benefit from the same cost-sharing benefits when it comes to things like rent and bills as a couple does.

Australian Bureau of Statistics data suggests a single person spends more than $770 extra on living costs a month compared to a person in a couple.

Brisbane-based financial advisor Michael Khouri said there was also the time and effort factor to take into account, as well as that inability to share resources.

"If somebody's single and they're trying to do everything themselves, they're usually a bit more time poor," he said.

He said he also saw people who had just come out of a separation struggling to fund separate homes – either renting or buying – especially as the cost of housing continued to rise.

"Fifteen years ago, I'd find that probably half or maybe say 30 to 40 per cent of their expenses was housing — and now it's just getting higher and higher."

More than half of Australians living alone are women, and around half of those women are aged 65 or older.

Older women are also a growing group at risk of experiencing housing distress or homelessness.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports that women and girls make up 60 per cent of the people seeking assistance from homelessness services.

And the number of homeless women aged over 55 has surged, with earlier census data pointing to an approximately 40 per cent increase over the decade from 2011.

Single, older women at risk of housing insecurity

The Housing Older Women's Network's Maggie Shambrook said many women who fell into that cohort were living invisibly — couch-surfing or living in vans as they searched for an affordable, suitable home.

Ms Shambrook said systemic issues including having worked in lower-paid professions or participated in caring unpaid caring work, along with the difficulty of building an asset base, contributed to this.

And as Ms Taylor had experienced, there was also the issue of finding something suitable and affordable for a single person, especially as they aged.

"Your mobility does change as you get older … your ability to navigate obstacles becomes less and less," Ms Shambrook explained.

"Mould, poor fittings and in hot weather, no good ventilation, that's a serious issue."

Ms Shambrook noted there was also the difficulty of finding a home in an area women wanted to live in, and in a community they wanted to connect with.

The lack of affordable, smaller homes which suit single people, in well-located suburbs is an issue also confronting housing policy experts.

The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI)'s Tom Alves said that "missing middle" style of home remained stubbornly difficult to build — largely because it was less profitable than apartments or detached homes.

"And then into the mix of that of course is the whole politics around in some neighbourhoods as well," he added.

Dr Alves said it was important to acknowledge the kind of home a single person wanted would change depending on their age, so a variety of home types was needed.

He said be believed government intervention to help increase the amount of affordable housing was needed and pointed to the Housing Australia Future Fund as one example of that.

That $10 billion fund was announced in 2023, with a commitment to help deliver tens of thousands of social and affordable homes by mid 2029. Questions have been asked about how affordable some of those homes really are.

In Queensland, where Ms Taylor is based, the government has a target of delivering 53,500 social and community homes by 2044.

But as she contemplates a bleak future beyond her next rent rise, those promises of new homes are too far away to be of much comfort for her.