'Housing pressure bites poor'

Article from today's Age:

A GROWING number of low-income Australians are enduring living standards typical of the Third World — with many forgoing basic necessities including food and health care — in order to meet the increasing cost of rents and mortgages.

Read the rest here.
Until I moved back to Melbourne in 2005 I experienced a lot of the problems described in this article. The four years that I lived in Ballarat, more than half of my income was going on rent, so a lot of the time I went without food and medicine, or had to sell things so I could pay for food or transport.