Living in a $900-a-Week Micro-Apartment: My Experience with Urban Homelessness

My teenage daughter was the first to discover him.

It was early morning, around 5:30 a.m., when she opened the door to our apartment, still groggy and preparing for her trip to the ice rink. The air outside was crisp and the darkness enveloped everything.

Using the dim light from her phone, she noticed something on the floor in the hallway.

As she tried to comprehend what she was seeing, the figure stirred.

Suddenly, a large, hunched shape sprang up from a heap of blankets, as if he had been anticipating the moment. He appeared poised to flee.

For a brief moment, they simply locked eyes, both startled by the unexpected encounter.

Then he spoke. He asked if he could stay. He was shivering.

‘Of course,’ she said, and quietly edged past him.

He had spent the night sleeping two metres from our front door.

We live in a small $900-a-week apartment in Sydney. Seven units. Families. Children. Solo parents. An elderly woman with dementia. And a dog whose barking is the unofficial building alarm.

And yet a homeless man had taken refuge on the third‑floor landing, unnoticed, until my daughter nearly walked straight into him.

When I spoke to him half an hour later, his story spilled out fast.

He’d been sleeping rough on the beach. Overnight, a dangerous surf warning had been issued. A particularly gnarly wave had washed over him as he slept, taking what little he had with it.

He’d lost his shoes. He was soaked, shaking, and had nowhere else to go.

He stood barefoot, his toes blanched blue by the cold. No blanket, just a tatty shopping bag of damp odds and ends and a busted up boogie board. 

So I did what I imagine many people would do. I gave him a blanket. Some lasagne. Found a banana. Made a hot cuppa. Gave him an oversized hoodie and socks. Treated him like a human being.

He stayed there until lunchtime.

Later, I noticed he’d left my mug carefully outside my door.

It was obvious this wasn’t a short‑term emergency. His face was raw and cracked, his arms dotted with sores, the quiet evidence of too many nights outside. 

Unsure what else to do, I rang Mission Australia to ask about local drop-in centres or emergency accommodation. 

Surely there was somewhere safer than an apartment hallway where children and mums pass through before sunrise.

The woman on the phone was well-meaning.

But when she asked whether I’d like to help him apply for an ‘affordable rental’ in Sydney, I almost laughed at the absurdity.

This man was hungry, barefoot. He had nearly been swept out to sea hours earlier. He owned nothing. And the system’s answer was a rental application.

And it wasn’t the first time I’d seen it up close.

The summer just gone, a family with a newborn was living out of their car in a council car park near the beach facilities.

It must have been baking hot as Sydney sweltered under heatwaves exceeding 42°C.

Advocates say those kinds of stories are becoming increasingly common. 

Mission Australia Deputy CEO Ben Carblis said homelessness services are under growing pressure, while pathways into stable housing are shrinking.

‘Every hour, more than 3,200 people in Australia seek help from homelessness services,’ he said.

‘At the same time, our frontline staff face huge barriers helping people move out of homelessness because there simply aren’t enough affordable homes available.’ 

Three months ago, Domain cautioned Australia’s rental market was close to breaking point, with renters on the cusp of no longer being able to absorb higher rents.

Domain’s chief residential ecnomist Nicola Powell (pictured) said Sydney has hit a clear affordability wall with house rents averaging a record $800 per week

Vacancy rates have tightened to a record low of 0.7 per cent nationally, intensifying competition, particularly in Sydney, already the second most expensive city in the world to live in. 

Domain’s chief residential economist Nicola Powell said Sydney has hit a clear affordability wall, with house rents averaging a record $800 per week, and unit rents a touch lower at $750.

‘Vacancy rates are lower than ever and supply remains incredibly tight, but rent growth is no longer accelerating everywhere,’ she said.

‘That tells us households simply can’t stretch any further.’

Homelessness in Sydney isn’t abstract anymore. It isn’t hidden under bridges or in dark corners we can pretend not to see. 

It’s literally on our doorsteps. Our hallways. Outside our children’s bedroom doors before dawn.

We are failing people so badly that survival now depends on the kindness of strangers, and even that kindness has limits.

The next time my daughter opens the door before sunrise, she shouldn’t have to wonder who or what she might find.