Tanya Bluett can't stop crying. The 62-year-old is about to be evicted from her home of nine years.
"I believed I was here 'til the day I died," Ms Bluett said.
"I've put so much effort into this, and so much love into the way I've done my garden … the children see this as Nanna's home."
Her home, which she shares with her grandson, was built as part of the National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS).
But the federally-funded scheme is being wound up in 2026.
Ms Bluett's unit in the northern Tasmanian town of Perth is due to be sold, along with five others in the same cul-de-sac.
With Tasmania's tight and expensive rental market, Ms Bluett has been unable to find anywhere else to go.
She is preparing for the worst, getting together a tent, camp beds and a gas burner.
"I love Perth, I really love it here," she said.
The cul-de-sac where she lives has become more than just her address.
Neighbour, Sam Groves, has been "an angel" after Tanya Bluett's 40-year-old son died in a motorcycle accident four months ago.
"Sam came to me and she just came in lifted me up, took over the funeral arrangements, helped make phone calls, helped me with the coffin," Ms Bluett said.
"If my friends are taken away, my family, I'll have nothing, I will be lost."
Sam Groves is also facing eviction.
She is searching for a home for herself and three children.
"It is scary and I have sat down and spoke to the kids and they're scared, they don't know if they're going to have to up schools."
The 34-year-old single mum said the rentals she is looking at are double the price of what she is paying now.
"We're sort of looking at options of how we can fit that extra 400 dollars a fortnight into our budget.
"We've thought, you know, we'll go and cut a load of wood … it's a lot but we'll just have to make cuts."
The money she had been saving all year for her son's birthday present will now need to go towards a bond if she is able to find a new rental.
"[It's] horrible for a mum to have to turn around and say, 'you can't get the birthday present you wanted this year, sorry'," she said.
As it has for Ms Bluett, the quiet cul-de-sac where she lives has become more than a home for Ms Groves and her children.
"It's beautiful; we are such a close knit little community, we all help each other out," she said.
The Tenants Union's Ben Bartl, is helping the families affected by the wind up of the scheme.
"They treat those homes like castles, the gardens are immaculate, they obviously care very much for the properties, they're embedded in the local community," Mr Bartl said.
The Rental Affordability Scheme gave private owners and community housing organisations a subsidy of $11,000 a year for 10 years to build new homes and rent them out at 20 per cent below market rents to eligible tenants.
The $3 billion scheme ends in 2026.
Housing organisations may keep their housing stock for low income earners but without the subsidy private owners may sell or lift rents.
"We know that over the next three years about 1,000 properties are going to be lost to the scheme in Tasmania. That's not just in Hobart and Launceston it's across Tasmania," Mr Bartl said.
It is a similar story across the country.
A 52-year-old woman, also from the small town of Perth, who did not want to be identified, told the ABC she was also being evicted from an NRAS home.
"I never thought I was going to be literally abandoned," she said.
The woman had to take out a loan to pay for a removalist and storage for her furniture.
But she has not found anywhere for herself or her cat to live.
The disability pensioner is preparing to live in her car.
The woman described the wind up of NRAS as "completely a bungle and completely messy and everyone has lost their compassion".
"Everybody knew these schemes were for 10 years but no one has planned for it," she said.
"Everybody's kind of stood back and gone, 'not my issue'."
There has been criticism that NRAS has been a windfall for private developers and that the subsidies were higher than they needed to be.
"It gave too much away to those private for profit investors in it, it asked far too little of them in return," Chris Martin, a senior research fellow at the University of New South Wales' City Futures Research Centre, said.
Mr Martin said the wind up of NRAS had exposed a massive shortage of affordable homes across the country.
"The latest estimate is that we need in the order of about 700,000 properties, additional properties to meet the need of low and moderate income households going out to 2035."
He said the end of NRAS also highlighted the brutal nature of eviction.
"It's a problem that is invisible.
"We don't have great data on it, but the data that we do have on it shows that thousands of households each year in Australia are evicted.
Community Housing Ltd (CHL) manages the six NRAS properties in the Perth cul-de-sac on behalf of private owners.
In a statement CHL said it had no control over the properties that are privately owned but said it was committed to helping tenants find alternative accommodation.
But it said those efforts had been hampered by a dire shortage of affordable housing.
A spokeswoman said CHL was deeply concerned about the withdrawal of NRAS in the midst of a housing crisis.
The newly-elected Labor government has promised to build 20,000 social housing properties over five years through a Housing Australia Future Fund.
The Tasmanian Government has pledged to build 10,000 new homes over the next decade.
It has also increased its private rental incentive program which gives landlords subsidies for capping rents for low income earners.
But for Tanya Bluett and Sam Groves, the help might come too late.
"Help now, I've got nowhere to go so come and help me," Ms Bluett said.
"They [the state government] have got to build so many houses … well there's six here they can buy now."
Ms Groves said with 4,000 people waiting for public housing in Tasmania, she hopes everyone will consider the impact of the housing crisis is having.
"I just hope that people look at this and go, 'OK, there is a problem'.
"The governments aren't doing anything.
