Canberra has become a tale of two cities – an affluent city with a dark underside where some people are just one illness, adverse life event or missed pay cheque from the precipice of unaffordable housing.
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With six months until Canberrans head to the polls, peak bodies will launch a new campaign on Monday urging voters and candidates to make affordable housing and homelessness a key ACT election issue.
ACT Shelter and ACT Council of Social Service's My Vote for Housing will feature four videos highlighting the poverty and disadvantage not seen by many Canberrans.
About 20,000 households in the ACT are facing housing stress, with single-parent household among the hardest hit, recent research showed.
Housing stress, defined as when individuals spend more than 30 per cent of their pay packet on housing costs, affects two in every five single-parent households in the ACT.
"For people on higher incomes, double-income households, people with some financial security, Canberra is an affordable, livable city of possibilities but for many people, that's not the case and the public debate often ignores their needs and interests," ACTCOSS director Susan Helyar said.
ACT Shelter executive officer Travis Gilbert said the campaign videos highlighted a side to Canberra often not seen.
"Offering a gentle counterpoint to well known campaigns which promote Canberra, these videos highlight a Canberra we don't see but which is just as true," he said.
"A Canberra where a study found that over 50 per cent of women sampled escaping domestic violence lost their homes within a year, more people are exiting homelessness services without a place to call home, all blocks in a new Canberra suburb were nabbed within three minutes, rents jumped from $450 to $470 per week over the past year and where we have the second highest rate of homelessness in Australia."
Mr Gilbert said the highest levels of housing stress were often seen in the private rental market.
"Most housing that is billed as affordable is defined as affordable for purchase," he said.
"An investor may buy a property that was built for less than $330,000 for a one-bedroom, which is the affordable threshold, but they could then rent that to someone like me, who is a private tenant, for full market rent and then that dwelling is not affordable anymore."
Mr Gilbert said although Canberra was often touted as an affordable place to buy, that relied upon the median income in the ACT which was much higher than other places.
"It means housing appears to be a lot more affordable but it really isn't for people even in the bottom 50 per cent, [earning] around $100,000 or less, because it still takes $600,000 to buy an average home in an average Canberra suburb," he said.
"In terms of home purchase, there really is that deposit gap that's locking a lot of younger people out of the market because they just don't have $60,000 in savings and it can take quite some time to save that if you're paying $470 a week to rent."
Tackling the problem of affordable housing should not be the sole responsibility of the ACT government, according to Mr Gilbert who is also urging the private sector to step in.
"If there was some sort of positive gearing scheme or a tax credit that enabled people to access concessions if they rented properties below the market rent, so say, at 70 or 80 per cent below the market rent, then if that was backed by a 10-year guarantee or at least a guarantee that when the next government got in, they wouldn't do away with it, then that might provide people with more surety around affordable housing being a good investment," he said.
