The sudden loss of a home rarely comes with warning or mercy. For a Perth mother of two, that moment has arrived. Her rental accommodation is being demolished, and she faces the prospect of homelessness with nowhere certain to go. The anxiety is palpable. "I'm very scared. I'm very worried about the safety for my children," she said.
Her predicament is not an isolated misfortune. Across Western Australia, nearly 10,000 people experience homelessness, with rough sleeping having risen sharply and over 1,900 people recorded as either rough sleeping or temporarily sheltered in Perth and the South West alone. The demolition of her home exposes a deeper fracture in Perth's property market: the scarcity of affordable rental housing and the insufficient safety net for those on low incomes.
Perth's rental market has contracted sharply in recent years. The growing shortfall in rental stock has driven the median weekly rent to $740, a 76 per cent increase since 2020. Even more telling is the near-total absence of low-cost rentals. The number of available rentals under $350 per week has dropped by 82 per cent. Vacancy rates have deteriorated to crisis levels. Where once families had choice in the market, they now face queues and competition they cannot win.
The state government has responded to the crisis, but not quickly enough for those facing immediate displacement. Homelessness in WA has risen eight per cent since 2016, with women now making up two-thirds of those accessing help, and cost pressures have pushed more and more families into housing crisis with WA's social housing waitlist grown to 20,700, an increase of more than a third in five years. Even more alarming, 330 per cent growth in priority social housing cases since 2018, with 6300 of those in greatest priority need waiting to be homed suggests the demand vastly exceeds available housing.
Some argue that government intervention has been insufficient. The Department of Communities has invested substantially in services for those already homeless, but preventative measures have lagged. When a family loses their rental home, the crisis accommodation options available through the state are often inadequate for families with children, and social housing waitlists stretch years into the future. Homelessness is a complex social issue with underlying, interrelated factors such as the lack of low-cost housing, family breakdown, addiction and insufficient mental services.
There is a counterargument worth acknowledging. The state government faces resource constraints and competing demands. While more than 20,000 homes were completed in 2024, the highest number since 2017, WA still fell 4000 homes short of the National Housing Accord target of 24,000 homes per year. Building supply alone has not kept pace with demand. Zoning restrictions, construction costs, and labour shortages have all contributed to the shortfall, and these are not problems that government can solve overnight.
Yet the reality for families like this mother is immediate. A demolished home is not a policy question; it is catastrophe. When rapid population growth concentrates in Perth and rental vacancy rates remain historically low, even a functioning system struggles to protect those at the economic margins. This mother and her children now join a growing cohort of Western Australians for whom the housing market has become inaccessible not as a long-term problem, but as an urgent crisis unfolding in weeks.
For families in her position, the question is not whether solutions exist in theory. It is whether they exist in time. The Office of Homelessness and Entrypoint Perth provide crisis accommodation referrals for families facing homelessness. The City of Perth also operates support services for those experiencing housing instability, though availability remains constrained.