Zero.

That’s the number of rental properties that were affordable for a young person on Youth Allowance in any capital city or regional centre over one weekend in March.

That was out of 69,000 listed rentals that were analysed by Anglicare Australia for its annual Rental Affordability Snapshot.

In any capital city or regional centre: 317 rentals were affordable for a single person on the Disability Support Pension

75 rentals were affordable for a single parent with one child on Newstart

2 rentals were affordable for a single person in a property or share house on Newstart

1 rental was affordable for a single person in a property or share house on Youth Allowance

0 rentals were affordable for a single person on Newstart or Youth Allowance

The report, released today, found just three rental properties or share houses in the entire country were considered affordable for someone on Newstart or Youth Allowance.

Anglicare Australia Executive Director Kasy Chambers told Hack they’ve been doing this report for a decade and it’s getting harder to find affordable homes to rent.

"It's worse than it was last year, it’s worse than it was three years ago," she said.

"It's really a very difficult situation for young people who are trying to get a start in the housing market."

Almost 800,000 people in Australia are on Newstart or Youth Allowance, and Kasy says they are forced to make tough decisions and sacrifices to pay their rent.

"You can change what food you eat, you can hold back on eating at some mealtimes, people make decisions about whether to insure their car, whether to fill prescriptions for medicine, but the rent is something you can’t not pay," she said.

It’s not just people on welfare payments who are affected by rising rents - just two per cent of the homes in the survey were considered affordable for a single person with a full-time minimum wage job.

For people on low incomes, any rentals that are more than 30 per cent of their income are considered unaffordable.

"It's an internationally accepted benchmark."

'Housing in Australia is broken'

Anglicare Australia is calling on all parties to invest in affordable homes as part of this election campaign.

"There is a huge shortage of secure, affordable rentals. That’s causing record levels of rental stress and even homelessness," Kasy said.

According to Anglicare Australia, we need 300,000 new social properties across Australia to address the rental crisis.

"We really want to see parties commit to investing in new social and community housing," she said.

"Housing that’s built for people on low incomes, many are single income houses so they can’t afford a four-bedroom, two-bathroom house and don’t need one."