As Rafiul Hossain prepared to fly to Sydney from Bangladesh to begin his engineering degree at Macquarie University, he knew finding a safe, affordable bed near campus would be hard. A flood of desperate Facebook posts from international students scrambling to find accommodation made that clear. But he still didn’t expect to end up in a “barely liveable” place in Lakemba, which had a busted toilet, a broken door, and a bed crawling with bugs.
Hossain is one of the hundreds of international students who have had a terrible start to their stay in Sydney as a projected record influx is expected to coincide with the twin challenges of a rental crisis and restrictions on working hours. There are fears this will result in the return of illegal housing, over-crowded rooms and “hot-bedding”, where multiple students share one bed on a roster.
“I am from Bangladesh and it is well known as a third-world country,” Hossain said after landing in Sydney this month. “But the place I’m currently staying is a thousand times worse than Bangladesh. After two days of long flights, I was hoping to get a good night’s sleep, only to end up in a bed full of mites.”
When Anna, who asked for her name to be withheld, moved to Australia in 2019 as an international student at 17, she spent her first few weeks living in a homestay. Once she turned 18 she shared her first apartment in Haymarket with 12 people – four people per room in bunk beds. It cost her $180 a week.
“We couldn’t really open up the...
This story is the second in an ongoing series on the Cost of Fraud, as Open the Books tallies the hidden fees on American tax returns. Click here to read the first story on fraudulent autism billi...