International student forced to live in tent
A 27-year-old student Zoe Jiang travelled from China to Sydney to attend university and much to her surprise, she was forced to sleep in a tent.
The finance student arrived in Australia in January 2023 and was shocked to discover the rental prices were too high, resulting in her having to set up camp in short-stay accommodation.
During one of her short stays, Ms Jiang did not have a room of her own. She had to pitch a tent in the middle of the living room to allow privacy from her roommates who came home late.
Despite sleeping in the shared room, she was paying $300 a week in rent.
"I have never had a night in a tent before," Ms Jiang said.
"It's a fresh experience, and I think camping in a living room is very different."
She has since found long-term accommodation, but she had lived in three different places in less than two months.
Ms Jiang is one of many international students struggling to find a home in the nation's growing rental shortage.
Housing advocates are concerned that international students are at risk of exploitation and are urging universities to offer support.
Ms Jiang is just one of thousands of Chinese international students who had to rush back to Australia or face the risk of losing their qualifications under a new Chinese government policy.
Ms Jiang joined the 59,000 international students who arrived in Australia in January 2023, a figure that proved “more than double” the amount as the same time last year, Universities Australia said.
Sydney’s rental vacancy is currently at its worst, growing 35 per cent in unit rents across the city.
Hundreds of residents are seen lining up outside rental inspections, but international students are suffering the most.
The national president of the Council of International Students Australia, Yeganeh Soltanpour, said many international students who have just arrived are often overlooked by real estate agents.
"[They] don't have a rental history because they are from overseas, so the chance for them to apply for a rental and get it is a lot lower," she said.
Local students might be able to find rental vacancies through personal and family networks, but newly arrived international students have “almost zero connections”.
"They can't ask someone for help, they don't always know where to look at ... [and] they might not know a lot about the areas," she said. "They may not even know how to use public transport properly.
"This leads to the issue that they have to choose homes within the CBD area, which means they have to pay more rent."
Zoe Jiang is one of many international students forced to stay in a shared space like a living room.
Leo Patterson-Ross, CEO of the Tenants’ Union of NSW, said transforming a living room into a bedroom could be unlawful.
"The assumption is that it is unlawful under planning rules, under local councils, to convert a room to her bedroom without getting consent from council," he said.
Mr Patterson-Ross mentioned he had seen "some very unlawful and often abusive behaviour" from landlords and head tenants who sublet rooms to students.
This includes withholding students’ passports and threatening to report them to the immigration department if they were to breach the tenancy agreement.
Mr Patterson-Ross also said that to prevent exploitation against international students, the government must fix “the fundamental issue” that everyone is faced with.
“We just do not have enough homes for everyone in Australia," he said.
"And that supply is not just the buildings, but also the pricing of the buildings."
He also called for an independent third-party audit to ensure rentals in the market are of good quality rather than having renters shoulder the burden.
Ms Soltanpour has asked international students to support each other to combat the rental crisis, but emphasised it was not their responsibility to “fix the issue”.
She also called on universities to offer more support for students struggling to find accommodation.
The chief executive of Universities Australia, Catriona Jackson, acknowledged that finding a rental anywhere in Australia is difficult for international students at the moment.
"Universities continue to support students by providing information on accommodation options before they arrive in Australia along with various other support services," she said.
"We encourage any student struggling to secure housing or facing financial pressures to reach out to their university for assistance."
Fortunately for Ms Jiang she eventually secured her own room in North Sydney, paying $300 a week – the same amount as when she was sleeping in a tent.
She met her new neighbour on the day she moved in, an elderly Italian woman who migrated to Australia when she was just 19.
Ms Jiang’s new neighbour invited her in for a cup of tea and encouraged her to make new friends in Australia as “life is a gift”.
Taking to social media after her move, a clearly grateful Ms Jiang wrote, “It’s such a great day.”
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