Mum's Home A Motel

Newcastle Herald

Thursday January 17, 2008

By MICHELLE HARRIS

A LACK of available accommodation in the Hunter's tightest rental market in 20 years has caused a Lake Macquarie woman to temporarily call a motel room home.

Kathleen Gifford said she had been moving from motel to motel while searching for a property to rent for herself, her teenage son and 10-year-old daughter.

It follows the dissolution of her marriage and the quick sale of the family's former home, at Belmont North, in mid-December.

She has been staying in motels since the start of January because she has been unable to secure a lease.

The Hunter's rental vacancy rate is at 1.7 per cent, and Newcastle's at 1.4 per cent.

Real estate agents say the city's vacancies are at their lowest level since the mid-1980s and have tipped the rate will shrink further when university students return for the academic year.

Ms Gifford has sent her children to stay with relatives in Tamworth but is worried she may not find a property in time for them to return to school in Belmont.

"It's a case of finding something here or moving elsewhere which my children don't want to do," she said.

"It's getting a bit desperate . . . at this stage it looks like they will probably be going [to school] in Tamworth."

Ms Gifford said she was shocked at the demand for homes and had widened her search from Belmont and Lake Macquarie to the Newcastle area without success.

"The agents [say] insurance companies have been putting people into rentals because of the floods and that's not leaving much," she said.

Ms Gifford's plight comes as the Housing Department defended its decision to board up 18 bed-sitter units at Mayfield and close 12 at Hamilton because it believed there was low demand for that type of accommodation.

In a Herald report on Monday, a department spokeswoman said the Mayfield units were unsuitable for crisis accommodation and the Hamilton units would be turned over to Wesley Mission.

© 2008 Newcastle Herald

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