When international student Ezequiel Borcardo stumbled across the Gold Coast in December, he knew it would be his new home.
“When I saw the beach, the skyscrapers and nature, I said, ‘This is my city’.”
But there was a problem: with limited English and income, he couldn’t find a rental.
“I made some inspections but no-one called me because they have a lot of students and can choose,” he said.
“In Argentina it [is] so easy … but here with the inspections, you need to prove you have the money, show you work. It’s more paperwork.”
Mr Borcardo was spending $700 a week to stay in a hostel while working odd jobs.
A work friend told Mr Borcardo’s story to their mum, Te Atamira, who offered her spare room for $300 rent including food.
“Seven hundred dollars that was just ridiculous so I said he can stay for a while,” she said.
“It was by chance, that’s just lucky, [but] there’s a breakdown somewhere in the system.
“Here’s kids coming from another country and they have to meet these requirements to stay in Australia and more requirements to get rent. They’re here and they’re hitting high rents.”
Cramped quarters
A parliamentary inquiry into Australia’s tourism and international education sectors has been conducting hearings on the industry’s post-COVID recovery this year.
Pablo Carpio, the director of the Language Academy, a private English school with about 600 students, addressed the committee on the Gold Coast.
“What has changed is the landlords, the attitudes of people,” Mr Carpio said.
“A girl I remember, a Brazilian girl, she rented a room, what they called a room.
“But she said, ‘The room is a bed that has curtains around [it] and I’m meant share that bed with a girl I don’t know and I’m charged $400 a week’.”
According to SQM Research, vacancy rates on the Gold Coast have collapsed since 2020, reaching as low as 0.3 per cent in some areas during 2021, with about 3 per cent considered a balanced market.
The median rent on a house on the central Gold Coast has risen from $596 a week in January 2020 to $1,096 last month.
“Many of the students opt to move to another city,” Mr Carpio said.
“Many of them would complain about the fact that landlords will take advantage of them, will overcharge them, charge them for a room in a van or tent in a backyard.
“A lot of them (international students) didn’t know what to do because a lot of them had come to Australia with a dream.”
Mr Carpio said with enrolments expected to increase by 30 per cent over summer months, his academy has started teaching students about their rental rights.
“They didn’t know how the rental rules work [and that] makes them vulnerable,” he said.
“We give them all of this information to make them more aware of their rights.
“You must have a proper contract done, if they don’t know, we put them in contact with a real estate agent.”
Gold Coast ‘dream’ being sold
Study Gold Coast acting chief executive Jeanne Tax told the committee many of the city’s 17,000 international students were struggling to find affordable housing “between $250 and $300” a week.
“The dream we’re selling is ‘study on the Gold Coast and live close to the beach and close to institutions and close to transport links’,” she said.
“But students are having to go more and more west to Pimpama, Ormeau, Gilston, west of the highway to find affordable accommodation and the transport links aren’t really what they need to be.”
In January, Study Gold Coast launched a campaign asking Gold Coast residents to consider renting a spare room to an international student.
The committee heard about 400 expressions of interest have been received.
Ezequiel Borcardo said he’s grateful for the opportunity to stay with Te Atamira.
“She’s a good person,” he said. “I get to know her, we make good relations.”