Family budgets strained to breaking point

A southern charity has helped six families this year forced to give up their mortgaged homes as the cost of living pulls working families below the breadline.

An investigation by Southern Issues reporter Mary Williams has found foodbanks are struggling to cope as family budgets are stretched beyond the limit.

• Working families forced to use foodbanks

Increasingly working families in Dunedin — including some with two earners — are struggling in the face of persistently high rental costs, rising interest rates and high inflation.

Presbyterian Support Otago — which provides financial advice and social support to struggling families, as well as a foodbank — has helped six families this year who have given up their mortgaged homes, compared with one family in the same period last year.

The charity’s chief executive Jo O’Neill said the housing situation in the South was hitting hard.

"We have been dealing with food insecurity for a very long time, but now we are seeing housing insecurity as a significant factor."

In the first part of a series on increasing hardship in the South called "Tough Times" we hear from the charity and real estate sector about the crunch, which is leading to people who previously had been getting by teetering on the breadline and sometimes falling below it.

A Dunedin man also shares his struggles finding a house to suit his needs, saying he has looked at 72 rentals, applied for 21 and got none

Tomorrow an Otago family shares their desperate struggle to keep their home after their main breadwinner lost the ability to work through injury.

On Saturday, video journalist Rhyva van Onselen experiences first hand what it is like to live out of your car in Queenstown.