Sharon and Steven Smith – and their six-year-old children Cooper, Brianna and Sapphire – will be homeless by Saturday if their luck doesn’t change.

The house they’ve rented for the past six years has been sold, and they’ve been unable to secure a new rental despite making around 20 applications in the past month.

“The house was put on the market in February and we were told about 30 days ago that it had been sold and we needed to be out by May 5,” Mrs Smith said.

“Since then we’ve been to countless home inspections – and when we get to them there’s always around 10 other families also looking for a home.

“We’ve made around 20 applications but have had no luck so far. The way it’s going we’ve only got a few days before we’re homeless. We’re terrified – our children deserve a roof over their heads.”

Mrs Smith said they just wanted a basic three or four-bedroom house in the Albion Park area, where their children have started Kindergarten this year.

“Because our son Cooper has autism, sensory processing disorder and global development delay, the only requirement is that the house has a gated backyard, as he’s a runner,” she said.

“He’s having meltdowns at the moment as he’s worried about where we will live – this has been his only home. And the girls have been in tears too. We don’t know what to do.”

Mrs Smith said she’d never imagined that her family would be facing homelessness. “My husband works hard, but with triplets it’s hard to save for a deposit so we can’t get a home loan.

“We’ve always paid our rent on time and been good tenants – yet we still can’t find a home.”

Mandy Booker, manager of Wollongong Homeless Hub, has seen a rise in demand for services from working families.

“These clients face extra barriers due to their inability to be able to connect with services during work hours, often leaving it too late,” she said.

“Through our early intervention tenancies-at-risk Gilder Project we have identified this as one of the hurdles, along with the inability to attend appointments and viewing times for property inspection that clash with work hours but are a requirement before rental property applications are accepted by real estate agents.”

Ms Booker said the hub could assess people for transitional properties managed by Wollongong Emergency Family Housing, or refer to other specialist services.

“Real estate agents can also refer their tenants to our Glider Project as soon as they know that the tenant needs to vacate the property,” she said. “This is aimed at preventing the tenants requiring assistance at the crisis end.”

Real Estate Institute Illawarra chairman Trever Molenaar said while there was a good supply of units available for rent in the region, particularly in Wollongong CBD, houses were more difficult to come by.

“There’s less of a supply of houses for rent as investors tend to prefer units, which leads to a high demand for those houses that are available for rent,” he said. 

This in turn pushed prices up, Ms Booker added: “Competition for the properties that are deemed affordable is high”.

This was backed up by Anglicare’s recent Rental Affordability Snapshot, which analysed 1051 rental properties in the Illawarra Shoalhaven on the weekend of March 24-25, 2018.

The snapshot found that while there were more rental property listings compared to last year, only two per cent were affordable for people on low incomes.

The report attributed the higher number of listings to the record number of new homes built in recent years, as well as the “relentless growth” of the private rental sector.

Anglicare head of research and advocacy Susan King said the snapshot highlighted the shortage of affordable private rental accommodation in the Illawarra region.