Last week Anglicare Australia released their annual Rental Affordability snapshots. The findings for students and young people are grim, to say the least.

The report analyses all the properties available for rent on a given weekend, and figures out what percentage of properties are affordable for different sections of society. How many properties are available in Canberra that are affordable for people on youth allowance? 0. Not one. The results for young people on the minimum wage were not much better.

And it’s not even peak season. When I moved to Canberra in February 2016, I spent over a month living on a friend’s floor because I couldn’t find a place to rent. This year, I was the one with friends on my floor: two of them, neither of whom could find a house (one who had a stable, well-paying full-time job, and the other a postgraduate student looking for a share house). We know that the rental market comes to a bottleneck in February, but it’s worrying to see that the rest of the year doesn’t appear to be much better.

With the highest occupancy rates in the country and rents rising faster than any other city, the report doesn’t come as a surprise. But it does come as a reminder that our government and our university need to do more to address the issues facing students: the fact that Centrelink payments are below the poverty line, and that there is absolutely no affordable housing anywhere in the territory. These figures also highlight the fact that students are living precariously: unaffordable housing means that if anything goes wrong, you might not be able to pay your rent, pay your bills, or to feed yourself. This, in turn, highlights the reliance students that work have on penalty rates and reasonable working conditions.

Studying when you don’t have stable, affordable housing is something far too many young people at ANU have to try and juggle at some point during their degree. While there is a slowly growing consciousness about the inaccessibility of our housing market, it’s not coming fast enough, and not enough action is being taken. On-Campus accommodation is hardly affordable either, even accounting for the fact that utilities are included. If you use a baseline rent of $200 (for uni lodges), that is still 75% of the maximum weekly Youth Allowance payment, leaving very little for food, transport, textbooks or even an occasional drink with friends. There are concerns that the new residential halls (once built) will only be more expensive.

ANUSA will be joining the campaign run by the National Union of Students this year, on your rights at work, home and uni. Part of this campaign will be raising awareness about the lack of affordable housing, and putting pressure on the government to improve welfare, work and housing conditions for students, and the administration to ensure that on-campus accommodation is affordable. Stay tuned on the ANUSA Facebook page, and the Your Rights at Work, Uni & Home page as well.