The struggle to find housing in WA

The resource-rich state of Western Australia is attracting people at a record rate, drawn west in the hope of a better life.

But the high growth - over 1,500 people a week - comes with a cost.

(Transcript from World News Australia Radio)

High rents and a dwindling supply of housing is leading to an increasing number of homeless people.

Ryan Emery reports on how many are struggling to find a home in the resource-rich state - even those working full time.

Kayla Hollins, a homeless single mother of four children, makes a cup coffee in the kitchen of her crisis accommodation.

Two of her children are autistic and she's been unable to care for them and also work.

Finding a place to rent was always going to be hard.

But her tale of trying to find a home is becoming increasingly common in Western Australia.

"People were outbidding each other in the rental side of it. I mean you hear about that when you're buying a house, but when you're renting? That was daunting enough."

With a booming economy and a resources industry hungry for workers, Western Australia's rental prices are going up and the number of houses, down.

Kayla says she spent months searching for a home and she wasn't the only one.

"There would be relay lines basically. One place had a kitchen table and the line was going around the kitchen table and it was coming from the front door and it was coming around one side of the table, filling out an application fee - those people were actually charging a week's worth of rent for you just to out an application in - and then you continued to walk around back out the door. And it was like a production line and that wasn't the first one. I looked at over 20 houses."

The median rent for a house in Perth is $450 and the vacancy rate just 1.9 per cent.

Social service providers are calling it a housing crisis, but Premier Colin Barnett disagrees.

"I don't think there's a housing crisis. There's pressure on housing, but it's not a crisis. It means that if people are coming here and finding that if you're in the rental housing market, it is expensive, so what you'll see as those people presumably get good and well paid jobs they will move into house ownership."

Refugee Esaya Ndayisaba has a job as a cleaner, but it's still not enough.

The 31 year old, his wife Ester and their two children are in emergency accomodation sourced by the Fremantle Multicultural Centre after the family was living in their car.

"Yeah it was very very hard for me and my wife because I tried to apply for house for two months, but I can't find any house, so it was very very difficult for me."

Diana Campbell from the Fremantle Multicultural Centre says clients used to spend 12 months in emergency accommodation before they moved on.

She says Esaya Ndayisaba and his family will be in the house in Perth's southern suburbs for much longer.

"Absolutely. You know the ideal is 12 months and in that time, I suppose in a different housing environment, that would be a good exit after twelve months, but famlies, most families stay a lot longer than the 12 months because we just can't find an exist for them after 12 months."

The centre also can't find emergency accommodation for everyone.

"We have one family now and one family just before Christmas, we bought an eight-man tent and that family stayed in that tent for about a week and a half before they were finally allocated a Department of Housing property, which they'd been listed for for many years."

At St Patricks Community Support Centre, the demand for food and housing services has never been higher.

Acting Chief Executive Officer Michael Piu says the centre is seeing a new face of homelessness as people spend up to 70 per cent of their income on rent.

"There's a conception out there that a homeless person is a good for nothing, a wino, sitting out there on the park bench with a bottle in the paper bag and it's just not the reality of life. There are people out there who are educated, family men, some are actually working and earning an income, but they just can't make ends meet in the current housing market, the current financial situation we find ourselves in. So it's not the way people picture it, not all the time anyway."

The state Premier says the government is helping people buy their own home with shared equity loans from the government's lender, Keystart, and they are also addressing the shortage of government housing.

The waiting times for a government home is two to three years for people on the priority list and the regular list is about seven years.

"Over the last year, Western Australia grew at twice the rate of growth of the national economy. That's attracting people and there's pressure on certain areas. Housing is certainly one of them, particularly in the rental housing market. From a state government point of view, we are building more public housing and we're also providing assistance to have more affordable housing. I look to the private sector to develop more housing and more housing choices, but there is no doubt that's one of the growing pains and it's a pressure point," WA Premier Colin Barnett says.

But there may be some relief from 2014 with the number of resource workers expected to fall as construction activity on major projects wind down.

It could also be the time that Kayla Hollins and Esaya Ndayisaba are finally placed in government housing.