Due to rising rent and a lack of accommodation, families who are experiencing homelessness have resorted to breaking into vacation homes to take showers and catch up on sleep.
On June 20, according to recent CCTV footage, a young family broke into an Airbnb apartment nearby Perth, with the mother guiding a boy and a toddler inside.
Property manager at Holiday Homes Made Easy, Davinia Gillard, told Daily Mail Australia that she believed the main reason for the break-in was simply to have “place to stay.”
‘I think it’s just really sad to see that there was a small child, a baby or toddler, out at midnight walking into a house to get five hours sleep and then leaving,’ Ms Gillard said.
‘Especially with the weather we’ve been having lately. It’s been really wet.’
According to Ms. Gillard, she discovered the house had been abandoned with a half-filled sink tub that had purportedly been used as a children’s bath and a washing machine that was beeping with a child’s shirt still inside.
Police had informed Ms. Gillard that the group was targeting vacation homes in a systematic manner since there had been three recent break-ins of a similar nature.
Later, more guys joined the gang; they entered the house during the night and took four cups, two lamps, four pillows, a doona, a bathroom towel, tea, coffee, and sugar.
She told 7News that “these are not your typical robbers out for a fast smash-and-grab.”
Ms Gillard said there had been a spike in people invading holiday houses, which is something she had not experienced before in her 10 years in the short-stay industry.
One incident two weeks ago had involved someone breaking into a house through a window to apparently only have a night’s sleep and use the shower.
‘We also had another instance when just between two bookings, someone rocked up to the house and in the back al-fresco area there was all clothing bits and pieces and it looked like someone was going to be setting up for the night,’ she said.
She thought people might be using websites, such as Airbnb, to target vacant properties.
‘I reckon they have because there’s no other way for them to know. I don’t have signs up on the houses,’ she said.
‘For them to know it’s vacant they must be finding out online and checking if it has people in it or not.’
Ms Gillard said that the increase in homelessness was very visible in WA and was particularly apparent in Perth.
‘I was recently walking about the streets and the amount of people in sleeping bags and in alleys – it’s pretty disturbing,’ she said.
‘It’s to the point where it is getting uncomfortable walking around the city.’
Australia is suffering a severe crisis of affordable accommodation with six out of eight Australian capital cities showing vacancy rates at less than one per cent.
A report by CoreLogic showed rental listings across the nation’s capital cities were down by around one-third from pre-pandemic levels and six out of eight capitals had vacancy rates around only one per cent.