Deb and Philip Barker have been spending the cold winter nights in a caravan in their own driveway, to provide their daughter and her young family a home amidst the rental shortage crippling the community of Manjimup, in Western Australia’s South West.
The daughter, Rachel Fitzpatrick, her husband, and their four children were living in a rental property in Manjimup when it was sold.
“The rentals are in such a shortage – and the expense of them – that they would have to move from Manjimup,” Deb Barker told ABC. “So my husband and I decided we couldn’t have them either on the streets, or put into a financial position where they're going to be struggling. So we thought if we purchased a caravan, hopefully we all can live together for the short-term.”
The rental market, she said, was the worst she had ever experienced in the forestry town of 5,000.
“There’s a shortage, really, it seems like they can charge you whatever they want,” she told the news agency. “You've got more and more people in positions like my daughter and her family, where the rent has been put up to a point where they're not going to be able to buy extra food.”
While Fitzpatrick said it was great to be supported by her family, she felt that being forced to move back in with her parents was “very stressful and disheartening.”
“We can’t see that little bit of light at the end of the tunnel at the moment,” she told ABC.
But an anonymous neighbour’s complaint to the council has made the Barker’s housing solution more complicated.
“People haven’t obviously got anything better to do — no compassion from whoever dobbed us in to the shire,” Deb Barker told ABC.
In Western Australia, staying in a caravan on your property for more than three nights in a month is illegal.
The family was advised by the Shire of Manjimup to apply for a three-month permit to stay in a caravan, which has now been approved.
“The shire has been really fantastic as far as understanding what is happening with the housing market in general,” Deb Barker said.
The family was asked, however, to move their caravan to the backyard to address amenity concerns, which will require the carport’s roof to be removed.
The Barkers are now actively exploring the option to apply for a 12-month permit to live in a caravan, which WA Local Government Minister John Carey has the power to approve.
“My biggest thing from this would be to make people aware that there is the opportunity to get some permits,” Deb Barker told ABC. “I can only hope that it’s helpful to other people, because it’s a sad situation for families — it must be heartbreaking.”
In search for an affordable rental, Fitzpatrick said she had looked as far afield as Geraldton – seven-and-a-half hours away, but everywhere was just “atrocious and greedy.”
“It’s all the same everywhere,” she told ABC. “The price that they’re able to put on these properties is atrocious and greedy. I want people who do have investment properties to think about the people that don't have a stable home, that are actively looking. Sometimes it's not all about the money."
Fitzpatrick said she and her husband were considering buying a property but were running into similar affordability issues.
“My husband, he’s working away trying to provide for his family and get a permanent roof over myself and our children,” she told ABC. “We don't know where or when that’s going to happen.”
