Nate Carkeet's eight-year-old son loves going to the beach, but the single dad can no longer afford to drive him from Brisbane to the coast.
Rising fuel and grocery prices and a rent increase have affected the west-Brisbane father, and there are nights where he goes to sleep hungry just to make sure his son has a full belly.
Mr Carkeet says he was injured whilst working a year ago at his family-owned landscaping business.
Shortly after, he says he had $12,000 worth of equipment stolen from his ute and he couldn't afford to replace it all.
Then, his son fell through the verandah in their rental property despite Mr Carkeet saying he'd constantly asked the landlord to make the essential repairs.
"They asked us to leave, and we were forced to move to another place, so we went from paying $500 a week to $670 a week," he said.
"I'm at risk here. Today I am cleaning up this house and doing anything I can because I know we could be asked to leave again."
Families feeling the pinch
The Queensland Council of Social Service (QCOSS) has released it's annual living affordability report.
It found that families were losing more than $10,000 a year trying to maintain a basic standard of living in Queensland, as wages lag behind record inflation.
Single, unemployed parents, and couples with two children have the biggest weekly deficits among the five modelled low-income households.
It found working families were not bringing in enough to cover off basic costs. A couple — one working full-time and the other on a casual wage — living with two children fell $174 short to meet basic needs.
Low-income workers in Toowoomba, west of Brisbane, and Cannonvale, in north Queensland, were among the worst off financially.
Rental data analysed for the report also indicated that no available properties were affordable to a single person accessing JobSeeker in Brisbane.
Aged pension couples were the only type of households to meet that standard, and then had just $76 a week left after essentials, according to the study.
"Most of these households do not have enough income to meet any unplanned expenses or emergencies," QCOSS chief executive Aimee McVeigh said.
"A two-decade high inflation rate, housing stressing, and spiralling energy prices are squeezing households' budgets beyond what people can handle.
"We know that people on low incomes spend a higher proportion of their income on essential expenses like food, fuel and housing. They, in particular, need urgent help. People are skipping meals or medication simply to pay their bills."
The report, which models the expenditure and income of a sample of low-income households, aims to find out just how much income a household needs to live a full and healthy life.
QCOSS wants the government to raise income support payments to at least $73 a day.
