The question of housing affordability is dominated by talk of house prices and what the Reserve Bank of Australia will do today when it meets to decide on interest rates. However, the ninth annual Anglicare Rental Affordability Snapshot highlights that for many people living on either the minimum wage or government benefits, the problem of housing is not about buying a home but being able to find an affordable place to rent.

Each year Anglicare Australia does a somewhat odd thing to gauge housing affordability – rather than rely on national data and measurements, it looks at what properties are actually available to rent throughout Australia and compares the price with what people on various incomes would be able to afford. And rather than merely look at national figures, it also looks at regions across the nation.

This year, on 24 March, it surveyed 67,365 properties that were listed for rent. Not only did the survey look at the price, it also considered the appropriate size of the property. A household with two adults on the minimum wage and two kids might be able to afford a one-bedroom apartment in Sydney, but it makes little sense to count that as “affordable”, given the size of the property would not be fit for that family’s needs.

Sign up to receive the latest Australian opinion pieces every weekday

The snapshot focuses on households on the minimum wage and four government income support types – the parenting payment, aged pension, Newstart and the disability support pension.

The news, as it has ever been since it began the snapshot, is not good at all for those trying to survive on government support.

Throughout Australia, out of those 67,365 properties listed, only three were affordable or appropriate for a single person on Newstart – one was in Tasmania, one in far north Queensland and one was a share house in Queanbeyan.

Even for a single person on the minimum wage, the rental market is very limited – just 5.3% of the properties listed across Australia were affordable – and mostly those properties were outside the metropolitan areas.

This highlights the biggest issue with rental affordability (and overall housing affordability) – where you live greatly affects what you can afford.

While, for example, across the nation 4.3% of proprieties listed were affordable and appropriate for a couple on the age pension, in greater Sydney just 34 of the 17,417 properties listed fit this category.

The best areas for an age pensioner couple to find a place to rent are the Queensland central region, the New South Wales Riverina and the South Australian south-eastern region. But even here we are taking a wide expanse that includes towns such as Murray Bridge, those in the Riverland and down to Mount Gambier.

For a family with a couple on the minimum wage, the best place is Western Australia’s south-west, as well as SA’s south-east and the Queensland central area (which includes towns such as Gladstone and Rockhampton).

Not surprisingly, overall affordability is easier for those on the minimum wage than with income support. But the difference across the capital cities is quite wide.

In Sydney, just 4.8% of properties are affordable for a household on the minimum wage compared to half of those listed in Perth:

A big reason for the disparity is the big difference in rental price growth over the past year. While in Sydney, rent prices have grown by 2.4% in the past year, in Perth – due to the end of the mining boom – they have fallen by more than 6%:

But even within individual areas the affordability can vary significantly depending on the size of the household and the number of adults on the minimum wage or income support.

In Perth, for example, while 50% of the properties were affordable and appropriate for households on the minimum wage, that number dropped significantly when only one adult in the household was on that wage and the other was on income support. Even for a single person on the minimum wage, just 1.4% of properties in Perth’s greater metropolitan area were affordable and appropriate.

The big takeaway from the figures is just how much more precarious life becomes when you are alone. Consider that there were 2,983 properties through Australia that were affordable for a couple on the age pension – a pathetic 4.3% – but just 833, or 1.2%, for a single pensioner.

In either case, it presents a worrying future should housing affordability continue to decline for younger generations once they hit retirement.

Overall since last year, the rental affordability picture has become worse, but with some good news in some capital cities.

Perth, Melbourne and Brisbane have seen an increase in affordability across a number of household income types – a function of the increase in apartment supply in Melbourne and Brisbane and falling demand and rental prices in Perth.

Australian housing stuck between a rock and a hard place | Greg Jericho Read more

In Sydney, there was a 0.6% point increase in the number of properties available for a couple on the minimum wage, but no discernible improvement for any other income type. In Adelaide the situation has actually deteriorated for households on the minimum wage:

Anglicare argues that currently “the federal government spends billions more on subsidising wealth accumulation for property investors than it does on public housing and homelessness services”, and that the situation needs to reverse. And certainly public housing construction is much lower now than it was 20 years ago:

On Tuesday the Reserve Bank will again decide on interest rates (most likely keeping them at the current record low of 1.5%). Quite often that provokes a discussion on the affordability of buying a home. But the Anglicare snapshot reveals that for the very many people in Australia for whom buying a home is not so much a dream but an impossibility, the daily reality of finding a place to rent is an almighty struggle – one that is barely improving despite the improving employment picture over the past year.

• Greg Jericho is a Guardian Australia columnist