Workers struggle to find short term stays in Lithgow rental market

Mount Piper Power Station is under going a shut down involving 500 workers on site which means there are a lot of people who need to find a bed.

A worker who wished to remain anonymous is set to work in Lithgow for the next three-and-a-half months and said it took five weeks to secure a rental.

"I reckon I was trying most nights of the week, but I knew it was going to be tough," they said.

In 2019 they first came to Lithgow for work when their company covered accommodation but even then it was only short stays.

"It was still all over the place, we couldn't get a straight run," they said.

"We couldn't get two months in the one place, it was eight or nine nights here then move somewhere else for two or three nights.

"We moved eight times in six weeks."

The worker said while looking for a place to call home, they found prices to be out of their budget and found themselves not wanting to commit to a long term lease.

"I didn't want to apply through a real estate or sign a three or six month lease which is what most of them are.

"I don't want anything to do with a lease or a contract at all because at any stage through the job I'm on, they could send me elsewhere within days and then all of a sudden I'm liable for rent and not even there," they said.

They also experienced offers to live in sharehouses, but it wasn't a preferable or ideal option.

"There seemed to be heaps of accommodation like that where you could hire your own room and share the kitchen, bathroom and loungeroom, but I wanted my own space," they said.

They said they stayed positive something would come up but where it was going to come up, was another thing.

"You've just got to be patient I suppose. I believed something would come up but where it was going to come up was another thing, I was only prepared to travel so far," they said.

"I didn't even want to travel out to Bathurst but if I had to I would've but if I had to go any further than that I would've told work I'm going to give it a miss because it's not worth it."

While they said it was a lengthy and stressful process, posting on Facebook community groups was what gave them a living solution.

"I was looking for a rental and was finally lucky enough to secure a little place in a little granny flat, close to the centre of the town, and I got that through posting on social media," they said.

Despite the strike of luck, they said looking for short term accommodation was even more difficult when you weren't familiar with the area or its people.

"I got lucky where I am now this time, but it made it extremely difficult not being from the area.

"I think you've really got to know someone, if you've been lucky enough to make friends with someone down there when you've worked there before and they happen to know someone with a room or flat," they said.

LJ Hooker Lithgow principal Jamie Giokaris said with a shut down at Mount Piper, a lot of workers wouldn't have any alternative but to travel in from other areas.

"It's not ideal if you're starting work at 5am and working 12 hour days so it's a bit of a crisis in terms of the bottom part of the market," he said.

From October 2020 to October 2021 the Lithgow housing market saw a 20 per cent increase in prices. Almost during all of that time, the rental vacancy rate was at less than two per cent and more recently has been at zero per cent vacancy.

Mr Giokaris said short term rentals in particular were very scarce.

"The motels, Airbnb, the service departments... all that type of workers, contractors style accommodation, hotels - they're all at 100 per cent occupancy," he said.

He said rentals have jumped from a minimum of around $200/220 a week up towards $300 a week.

"The rents have jumped somewhere around $60 to $80 a week, especially during COVID," he said.

Mr Giokaris said during the pandemic, people who brought stability to the rental market, weren't able to move postcodes as a consequence of lockdown.

"We were doing somewhere around 30 lettings a week leading up to COVID and then during COVID and post lockdown we're back to seeing far less vacancy and only doing 10 lettings a month as opposed to 30," he said.

"That's due to a lack of people obviously vacating and moving, there's a lot of different factors but I guess a lot of economic and a lot of social and then COVID thrown in there, it has really impacted a lot of people."

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