Locked out of learning: how Melbourne’s housing crisis is squeezing out regional students

When you're moving to the city for uni, the biggest challenge can be outside the classroom: where are you going to sleep? Audrey Hatwell reports.

Zoee Boyden had everything lined up.

After an early entry offer from Swinburne University, Boyden was ready to make the move from her home in Mortlake in Victoria’s south-west to Melbourne to study. But by the time January came around, she was still yet to hear from Swinburne Student Residences.

“I was a bit anxious about not knowing where I was going to be or where I’d end up as a second option,” Boyden says.

Without student accommodation, the move would have been impossible. Hawthorn’s private rental market was too competitive, too expensive and too complicated to navigate from hours away.

“I was looking at moving into a house with strangers that were probably a lot older than me in the suburbs somewhere. That still would have been expensive.”

Fortunately, Boyden secured a room on campus in time for her university life to begin, but she knows others weren’t as lucky. As Melbourne’s housing crisis worsens, students like Zoee Boyden are finding that their biggest barrier to higher education isn’t their marks, subject choices or deferrable tuition fees — it’s finding a place to sleep. Even Boyden has since had to leave Melbourne again when campus rents became too pricey, and now commutes from Geelong where she lives in a share house.

For students relocating from regional areas to Melbourne for university, finding a place to live is no longer just stressful. It is becoming impossible. According to PropTrack figures, rental vacancy rates between October 2023 and October 2024 wavered between 1.11 and 1.64 per cent — the lowest rates in decades.

In a suburb like Hawthorn, where Swinburne University is based, median rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $430 a week. Yet payment rates for Youth Allowance for a student who is “single, no children, 18 or older and need to live away from your parents’ home” are $663.30 a fortnight.

The broader rental crisis affects many Melburnians and is driven by low housing supply, high interest rates and growing demand. Students from regional areas face extra disadvantages, with no rental history, limited income and a need to secure a place at the start of the academic year.

This demographic is often locked out of the private market before they even arrive. This means students across the city are competing for limited on-campus student housing.

Swinburne Student Residences house about 600 students each year, but when they fill up, the alternatives are unaffordable, unavailable or a long commute from classes. For many students, these housing shortages delay or derail their education.

Swinburne Student Accommodation currently ranges from $305 to $440 per week per resident, depending on the type of room. Swinburne offers dormitory-style rooms, and two, three and four-bedroom apartments. All rates include electricity, gas, water and laundry services.

The shared four-bedroom apartments in Swinburne Residences that Boyden moved into are leased at $305 a week. Median rent for a four-bedroom house in Hawthorn is $1,350 a week according to realestate.com, not including bills.

Swinburne Student Residences in the heart of the Hawthorn campus. (Photo: Audrey Hatwell)

For third-year Swinburne students Jasmine Beck and Eboni Bouhafid, returning to Swinburne Residences was a financial no-brainer.

“It’s cheaper than living off [campus],” Bouhafid says. “Especially considering the location.”

Both students agreed that without on-campus accommodation they would “still be living with our parents in Ballarat”.

Swinburne Student Residences also include maintenance services that can be overwhelming and expensive for tenants renting privately.

“Maintenance — that’s a big thing. You don’t have to pay for anything that needs fixing in your apartment,” Bouhafid says.

Beck and Bouhafid also mentioned the social side of on-campus residences and how it has provided them with friends to move out with in the future.

“We are only friends and want to live together because we met on residences,” Bouhafid says.

“I wouldn’t have had other options for people to move in with [if not for residences],” Beck says.

Students tend to stay in student housing longer due to the financial and social benefits, meaning incoming first-years often struggle to find available accommodation.

The view from Swinburne Student Residences. (Photo: Audrey Hatwell)

Swinburne students find this particularly hard as Hawthorn and surrounding suburbs are systemically expensive due to gentrification and proximity to the CBD and the Yarra River. According to Domain, it is Hawthorn’s heritage-listed homes and neighbourhoods that have allowed the “median house price to stand resilient at $2.53 million”.

In the Suburb Trends Rental Pain Index, Balwyn ranks 14th among Victoria’s worst suburbs for renters with a score of 79. Clayton, where Monash University is located, fares even worse at 12th, scoring 86 — just short of the maximum 100. The index reflects high rents, tight vacancy rates and affordability pressures.

But it is not the full picture.

The data relies on average household incomes and fails to capture the divide between wealthy homeowners and low-income renters. In suburbs like Hawthorn and Balwyn, the high incomes of long-time residents can skew the data, masking the severe housing stress faced by students like those at Swinburne trying to break into the rental market.

According to realestate.com, the median rental price for a one-bedroom unit in Clayton is $360 per week. Clayton has had 863 renters seriously interested in leasing a house and only 35 houses available for lease. Hawthorn has had 1,271 renters seriously interested in leasing a house in the last month and only 28 houses available for lease.

Recently, Boyden moved off Swinburne Residences due to rent increases and found her only option was Geelong.

“Living in Melbourne is extremely expensive compared to a lifestyle in Geelong. I’m able to afford even the minor things like groceries more easily and even with the expense of travel to uni, it’s cheaper,” she says.

“My rent has decreased significantly. And now I’m living in a full-sized house compared to a tiny apartment in the city.”

But despite the discount, Boyden’s move has other costs.

“It takes me about two hours to get to uni, so roughly four hours a day commuting,” she says.

Beth Reeves is another regional student who lived at Swinburne Residences after a gap year and has now moved into a share house. “I think that if I hadn’t had the option of res, I would have taken another gap year and my education would have been delayed,” she says.

“People used false addresses to say they lived further out of the city than they did so that they could get a room in residences,” Reeves says.

Beth Reeves outside her new share house that she shares with five other people. (Photo: Audrey Hatwell)

International students are often blamed for the rental crisis, and both major parties promised to cap international student numbers in the lead-up to the federal election. But a study by researchers at the University of South Australia which examined data from 76 time points between 2017 and 2023 found there is no evidence that international students strain rental supply in Australia.

So, what is being done about this ongoing issue?

Swinburne faced scrutiny last year over plans to buy an apartment building on Park Street for redevelopment and campus expansion. These units were two bedrooms and recently leased for $550 a week, $140 less per week than Swinburne’s Park Street two-bed apartments. Swinburne has not announced any plans to expand its residences.

Nationally, the Property Council of Australia reported in 2025 that the pipeline for purpose-built student accommodation has increased by 5,605 beds since Semester One last year. The private sector remains the driving force in development. Supply is expected to increase by just 6 per cent over the next five years — well below projected demand growth.

The federal government’s Tertiary Access Payment (TAP) intends to support regional students moving for study, offering a one-off payment of up to $5,000. This would cover the rent of a Hawthorn one-bed unit for under three months.

Additionally, students like Beth Reeves, who took a gap year, are ineligible for the payment.

Zoee Boyden’s four-hour commute is more than just an inconvenience. It is a sign of a system under strain. To remain committed to their education, students across Melbourne have to trade off their mental health, academic success and connection to university life.

“It’s been really anxiety-inducing and hard to feel secure and stable in an environment that’s so unfamiliar,” she says.