I've always known Hobart's a pretty special place
and it was only a matter of time before the rest of the world caught on to that.
But the fact that we've now outstripped places like Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane
is pretty unbelievable really.
I'd describe the rental market in Hobart at the moment as a mercenary.
It's very exclusive, it's very hard to get a foothold in.
I actually would describe it, as a housing crisis in Tasmania there is no doubt about that.
It all sucks mate.
It's not there to help the person that's struggling.
It's there to help the person that's doing well already.
Hobart has become the darling of Aussie tourism.
In the past six years, the number of annual visitors to Tasmania has grown nearly 50 percent.
And they’ve brought an extra 2.7 billion dollars with them.
When I lived here in 2016 it seemed like the tourist boom meant nothing but good things for Tassie.
But two years on, accommodation in this city is at crisis point.
And it’s hitting the bottom, hardest.
I heard about the showgrounds, so I come over here and
they put us up.
You've got two other gents staying with you at the moment?
Yes.
So this tent here is Red's.
He lives in this tent.
And this tent over here is young James.
We do the best we can with what we've got.
Depression the hardest thing about being homeless,
cause once you're homeless and
tried every resource that you know,
you get to a point where you just get down and you just give up.
Rhann is 38.
He became homeless in December after a falling out with his ex-partner.
Like many of the city's homeless population, Rhann has set up camp at the local showgrounds.
I've applied for over 60 rental homes in the last 8 months.
I'm covered in tattoos, pretty much from head to toe.
So as soon as you get there, you get the
the eyes up and down and straight away you know you've got no chance.
It's too hard to afford the rentals these days you know,
like the property that I got here a while ago was $450 a week.
That's 6 weeks up front you have to pay
it's just impossible.
My biggest fear,
losing custody of my daughter,
because I haven't got a house for her.
How much does that play on your mind?
Everyday.
Every second of every day.
I'm stuck.
There's nothing I can do.
Just over here we've got an old shed.
So we've got a couple of young fellas that've been in the park for a couple of weeks each now in there.
Scott Gadd is the chief executive of the Royal Agricultural Society of Tasmania.
For the past six months though
he's been running what has become a pop-up crisis centre.
I never expected us to be full of tents and homeless people so,
it's what I've said all along is this is not a good site for homeless people to be.
You know, they need proper housing.
It first became apparent in December last year.
We had families and working people arriving
that we had never seen before.
Did you ever imagine, taking on this job?
Not in a million years.
There's no longer an atypical homeless person.
We have everything here, we have the complex cases with all the other issues at play.
Right through to working people, people that you would otherwise expect would be able to get a house
but they just can't in the current environment.
What's been the hardest thing, or the most distressing thing that you've had to witness here?
I've had to personally intervene in probably now half a dozen instances of domestic violence.
Like step in the middle.
It's like a spiral, if you don't have a roof over your head everything else tends to overtake you.
They can get to a point where it can be devastating.
It can be, ultimately lead to death.
So this is your famous home.
How long have you been here?
This one is five years.
Breathe in, small house small space.
I feel like I'm in a soapy.
In here everybody's got their stories.
I feel like they're all being juggled.
They all have a similar story to where they've come out of.
Gypsy also lives on-site at the showgrounds.
But doesn't consider herself homeless.
For many here she's become the unofficial caretaker.
Helping out where she can.
I've been building a rapport with a few of them.
And there's lots of complex issues.
People shouldn't be in tents.
This is not the north, it's freezing.
There's already been snow on the hill.
While the property market in the rest of the country is cooling
here in Hobart it's red-hot.
In the first three months of this year alone
property prices shot up by almost 7%.
That's also pushes rents higher, rising almost 12%.
Hobart is now the least affordable city to rent in, beating out Sydney.
Well, the rental market, we're 1.4% vacancy rate and we haven't seen that for a long long time.
There's just not enough properties.
Real estate agent Anne Ackroyd is today showing a one bedroom unit in Hobart's outer suburbs.
It's up for $230 a week.
Well a year ago this would've been $150 a week.
Probably two years ago, probably 110 - 115?
So its increased dramatically over the last couple of years.
Have you ever seen anything like this?
No.
The boom that's happening now especially in Hobart,
we are outdoing the capital cities at the moment,
which is incredible and I've never seen that before.
But there's a lot of investors that are buying in Tasmania.
If you live in Melbourne or Sydney, you can sell up there and buy down here a similar property,
for half the price.
It's a little bit depressing really to see that many people that are looking for, a roof over their head.
It's a basic public right and a lot of people don't have that.
I've got good qualifications I've got a really good rental history
and I am really finding that the rental market is a
place now that I've been locked out from.
Kate is one of the lucky ones.
She’s a single Mum on welfare payments and is temporarily living in subsidised housing.
The last house I was in I was paying 370 a week in rent and
so out of a $26,000 income you know that includes your child support and that,
I was paying 19,000 of that a year in rent.
How much does the idea of becoming homeless play on your mind?
I try not to let it but it does.
We will do anything we can to not end up in that situation because we have children.
It does feel like the system is stacked against me.
I'm calling for some changes around that.
Kate’s own anxiety of becoming homeless has led her to act.
She's founded a group called Hobartian's facing Homelessness.
Calling on the State Government to address the problem.
Our primary objective is to break down stigma
and open people's minds to broader solutions around housing alternatives
to meet the demand of the population.
The state government has so far paid 500 private landlords to offer cheaper rent,
offers discounts on housing related taxes
and gives first home buyers and builders a grant to enter the market.
But economists warn that those measures can actually serve to push up prices.
The Tasmanian housing minister declined and interview.
But said in a statement:
It's scary, you'd like to picture a future and we can't plan for the future.
And I'm very worried that if we go on much longer and I've got people in tents,
that something's going to happen an accidents going to happen
or some catastrophe is gonna befall us.
My dream,
would be just to get settled in a house and have my daughter in my life.