Soaring rents are forcing Melbourne university students into financial hardship, yet their voices won’t be recorded at ballot boxes on Saturday.

They are international students.

Aria Zhang, 25, from Shanxi, China, has lived in Melbourne for three years. After finishing her master’s degree at the University of Melbourne, she now studies early childhood education at Victoria University.

She said she shared a modest house in Footscray with one roommate. Rent has climbed from $300 to $375 a week since she moved in — a rise of 25% in three years.

“I work weekends just to keep up,” Ms Zhang said. “Rent now takes up half my income.”

She earns $30 an hour working part-time at a restaurant in nearby Preston, clocking about 16 hours a week.

Her parents help with tuition and essentials, but rent is entirely self-funded.

Footscray, home to a large migrant population and one of Melbourne’s busiest education hubs, has seen sharp rent increases since 2024.

According to PropTrack, the suburb’s median weekly rent reached $600 in early 2025 — a 4.3% rise from the previous year.

“I’ve thought about moving,” Ms Zhang said, “but it’s nearly impossible.”

“One house can have 20 applicants. We’re always last, no local credit, no full-time job.”

Most landlords require income records, utility bills, and Australian work history, which are documents international students usually lack.

“China has more people and less land,” Ms Zhang said. “But it’s still easier to rent there than in Australia.”

Nationally, rents rose 6.4% in the year to December 2024, followed by another 5.5% increase to February 2025, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Melbourne unit rents reached a record $575 per week in early 2025. It was the steepest quarterly rise among all capital cities, Domain reported.

With barriers curbing affordability, navigating Melbourne’s rental market has led to creative workarounds.

Faced with complex rental procedures and competitive demand, some international students are turning to paid inspection services to secure housing.

Norah Meng, a Malaysian Chinese graduate student at RMIT, launched a social media-based viewing service in 2023 with her partner after struggling themselves to find housing.

“About 85% of our clients are international students,” Ms Meng said. “They can’t attend inspections or meet local rental criteria.”

Priced from $20 per inspection in student-heavy areas like Carlton and the CBD, the service includes neighborhood safety checks, video tours, and agent follow-ups.

Ms Meng said she didn’t apply on behalf of clients, but helped them evaluate properties and navigate application requirements. She said she often offered guidance on how to strengthen their chances with agents.

“Demand spikes before semester,” she said. “Furnished places are snapped up within hours.”

She said leases often required 12-month commitments and full-front payments, making it hard to switch even when issues arise.

Unfamiliar with local suburbs and short on time, many felt stuck renting near campus, further limiting housing options and social integration, she added.

Despite covering tuition, rent, and taxes, students like Ms Zhang are excluded from public housing schemes, which are generally reserved for citizens and permanent residents.

Australian education department figures show, in 2023–24, international education generated more than $51 billion making it the fourth-largest national export after coal, iron ore and natural gas.

Victoria alone contributed $14.8 billion in 2023, second only to New South Wales, a ranking it has consistently held since 2019, according to the data.

Yet students driving this billion-dollar sector are excluded from most public housing assistance, and often left to compete in an overstretched and unaffordable private rental market, Ms Zhang said.

“We follow the rules,” she said. “But people still act like we’re the problem.”

In his May 2024 budget speech, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said rapid growth in international student enrollments was “adding pressure on prices and rents” and “making housing harder to find for everyone”.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton reportedly called for cuts to “the excessive number of foreign students” to “relieve stress on rental markets”.

The Coalition cited Clayton, home to Monash University and where rents reportedly rose 20% in the past year, as proof that student arrivals were straining housing supply.

But experts argue that blaming international students for rising rents lacks supporting evidence.

In a 2025 study, Dr Hannah Soong and Dr Guanglun Michael Mu from the University of South Australia found international students were not the cause of the rental crisis.

Their analysis of 76 datasets from 2017 to 2024 showed no statistical link between enrolment growth and rising rents in major cities including Melbourne and Sydney.

“Nationally, rental prices tended to fall as international student numbers increased,” Dr Soong said.

The researchers called for targeted, evidence-based housing policies in student-dense areas, rather than short-term migration caps driven by politics.

“The assumption that international students drive up rents is unfounded,” Dr Soong said. “It distracts from the real issue: chronic housing undersupply.”

With affordability pressures mounting, Dr Soong proposed meaningful reform. She said this required more than blame and, instead, demanded evidence, planning, and long-term action.

International students cannot vote, yet their experiences are central to one of the election’s most heated debates.

As election debate intensifies, Zhang said she felt students like her remained excluded from the conversation, and from housing policy itself.

“We do everything right, but we are invisible,” Ms Zhang said.