The bedroom that Divya Bhusal paid $140 per week to share with four other international students in Sydney became so stuffy on warm nights that she preferred to sleep in the backyard on a yoga mat.

When she decided to leave the house, in the inner-west suburb of Ashfield, after six weeks, she shopped around at least 10 other properties listed on the online ads site Gumtree. One apartment she inspected in Ultimo had 10 people sleeping on bunks in one bedroom; a place advertised as a granny flat in Merrylands turned out to be a rusty old caravan; and a landlord in Campsie offered her part of his garage as a room.



As Sydney’s international student population balloons, the lack of affordable housing continues to force students into precarious, exploitative and in some cases illegal living arrangements. Despite attempts to crack down on illegal boarding houses, the inner-city is teeming with overcrowded apartments and unscrupulous landlords demanding unlawful amounts of bond money which students, often unaware of their legal rights, never see again. With lucrative foreign enrolments unlikely to drop off any time soon, sustainable solutions to the accommodation crisis continue to be elusive.



During February and March in 2018, Guardian Australia found more than 50 overcrowded properties targeting international students listed on Gumtree and foreign language forums. Dozens had created makeshift bedrooms in living areas using furniture, curtains or illegal partitions, while others advertised shared rooms packed with four or more students. Edmund Ang, a fire safety engineer and New South Wales chair of the Society of Fire Safety, was shown photos of 10 of these properties and said they were “concerning from a fire safety perspective”. He said using furniture to partition parts of the living room could block the pathway to the front door and act as fuel in the case of a fire.

Divya Bhusal is a 22-year-old student from Nepal. She says the photos on Gumtree ‘are not accurate. But ... you just take it because you’re desperate.’ Photograph: Divya Bhusal/ Facebook

The dearth of affordable housing puts enormous pressure on international students, who pay tens of thousands in upfront university fees and are limited to 40 hours paid work a fortnight under the terms of their visas. Additionally, workplace exploitation is rife among international students who are often significantly underpaid. Bhusal, a postgraduate student at the University of Western Sydney, says the stress and demands of inspecting properties and moving contributed to her failing two subjects in her first semester.



“The photos on Gumtree are not very accurate,” she says. “They’re not clear about how many people live there. But, by the time you get there, you just take it because you’re desperate and don’t want to waste more time.”



Nepalese student Brasish Suwal has moved four times during the 12 months he has been in Sydney and says he has never had his bond returned in full, leaving him almost $1,000 out of pocket, despite never breaking an agreement. He chased one unresponsive head tenant for months before reluctantly deciding to let the money go.



Over the past 12 months, the 19-year-old has paid $100 per week to sleep on a bedbug-infested couch in an Ashfield living room, $100 per week to share a small room with three other students elsewhere in Ashfield, and $60 per week to live in a squalid share house in Arncliffe teeming with roaches where he shared a room with his best friend. He says he didn’t eat properly at the Arncliffe house, which he stayed in for five months to save for his tuition, because the kitchen was so filthy.



“It was so unhygienic and the fridge was so disgusting so we tried to make a kitchen in our room instead,” he said. “We bought an electric stove, a rice cooker and a small fridge, and we started cooking inside our own room.”

A property with four bunk beds crammed into one room in an ad targeting students online in 2018. Photograph: Gumtree

Purpose-built student housing is costly and there are only enough rooms for a fraction of Sydney’s students. Without rental history or proof of income, leasing through an agent is often not an option for international students. This leaves those who don’t come from wealthy families with little choice but to rent a bed in an overcrowded unit.



One rundown two-bedroom apartment Guardian Australia visited in Haymarket charged $150 per week to sleep in a room with four beds and $135 per week for a room with six beds; the apartment was taking in up to $1,410 per week, which is at least $500 more than the price similar rentals in the suburb were being advertised for. The view from the unregistered boarding house is obstructed by the 14-storey Urbanest student accommodation next door, where single rooms in a shared apartment start at $450.



“That’s for the rich kids whose parents pay,” the self-described “manager” said. “If you want humility, this is the place for you.”



He estimated half the building was occupied by international students and said his phone had been ringing off the hook with recently-arrived students eager to find a bed.



In NSW, premises that provide beds for a fee to five or more residents should be registered as boarding houses. They are considered illegal if they are not registered, do not have development approval for the number of occupants, or illegal building works have been carried out when subdividing rooms. Overcrowded apartments could also be in violation of strata bylaws or tenancy agreements with the owner.



International student Brasish Suwal at his new home in Burwood, which is clean and light. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

The issue of dangerous student housing came to the fore in 2012 when two Chinese students jumped from a fifth floor Bankstown apartment that did not meet fire safety regulations and caught ablaze. Yinuo “Ginger” Jiang was seriously injured and Pingkang “Connie” Zhang died.



Two years later, more than a dozen Japanese and Korean students were lucky to survive when their dilapidated illegal housing complex in Alexandria went up in flames. It was revealed they were paying up to $160 each to sleep in shipping containers, buses and caravans stacked on top of each other. They shared one Portaloo.



After the headline-making incidents, the City of Sydney set up a special taskforce to crack down on illegal rentals. In 2015, they uncovered highly organised networks of unofficial boarding houses targeting international students. In one three-bedroom house in Ultimo, they found 58 beds squeezed into 19 makeshift rooms. In others, they found dangerous and unhygienic setups with students crammed into bathrooms, stairwells, fire-escapes and, in one case, a pantry. As a result of the investigations, landlord Amr Hassan Badawy Hassan was convicted and fined $100,000 for running an illegal hostel out of a supermarket in Chippendale.



A spokeswoman for the City of Sydney says the council monitors websites commonly used to promote illegal share accommodation and continues to work with police and government agencies to investigate complaints.



While the clampdown brought much needed attention to the issue, those who work in the sector say it’s far from being resolved.



Solicitor Sean Stimson runs the international student service at Redfern Legal Centre. He says one in three students he sees are seeking help with tenancy issues, often because their bond as been withheld without reason. Stimson says it can be hard to pursue the leaseholder for the money as the student often doesn’t know who they are or where they live. On occasion, students have been made to pay six or eight weeks’ rent as bond, which is more than the legal limit of four weeks.



A property with bunk beds and curtains acting as dividers from the living area in an ad targeting students online in 2018. Photograph: Gumtree

Stimson has also identified a scam in which students find an apartment online, move in, and are told within a few days there is a defect with the property. They are then moved to a “significantly inferior” property, with the same rent, and told they either stay or lose their bond. Others have been duped into transferring a rental deposit from overseas, only to arrive in Australia and find the property never existed.



Leo Patterson Ross, the acting senior policy officer for the Tenants’ Union of NSW, says “bond harvesting” is common and often involves a tenant who takes out multiple leases, many using fake names, but lives elsewhere and sublets to students. “We became aware of one guy who, over time, had taken out leases on at least five places with at least three different names,” he said. For the people running these boarding houses, it’s a lucrative business. The owner of the Haymarket apartment Guardian Australia visited has at least two other apartments in the inner-city that are full of international students.

After struggling to combat overcrowding for years, Hyde Park Towers in Sydney’s centre passed a strata bylaw limiting occupancy to two adults per bedroom. Building manager Allan Hoy says they police it “religiously”.



“There is very little overcrowding now,” he says. “However, they still try. They will try forever, but we get onto it very quickly.”



They previously had to upgrade the security system after they found students were having copies made of their security swipe cards.



“That’s the sort of extent people will go to,” he said. “I know it’s an endemic problem throughout the city. It’s a fire risk and it’s a health and safety risk but with the student population increasing, it will always happen.”



Pratik Ambani, the president of the Australian Federation of International Students, says with tuition rising, the cost of living rising and student numbers rising, the problem is intensifying.



“Students only have a limited budget,” he says. “They can’t stop eating, they can’t stop paying their tuition. The only thing they can compromise on is their accommodation and the only option they are left with is to just get a place that is enough to sleep and keep their luggage.”

