‘They miss out’: soaring rents and insufficient support force more uni students in Australia to live with parents

When Amelia Grace Wilson-Williams started her university degree, she didn't imagine it would be spent bunkering down in the family home.

But when the undergrad law student at the University of Technology in Sydney began hunting for rental properties in which to live alone or share with fellow students, she realised it was impossible while studying full time and only relying on her student Centrelink payments.

Instead, she's doing her degree while living at her family home in Penrith, about 50km - or a 90-minute commute - away.

"The cost of apartments if I were to move is way too high," she says.

"Even in the Penrith area you expect to pay around $400 per week, and it [the cost] just increases the closer you move to the city."

For decades, the student share house has been a rite of passage. Some things have remained the same - mouldy couches, empty beer bottles and mismatched cutlery.

But a rental crisis, coupled with stagnating welfare payments, is leading more young people to opt out of moving out altogether. And others face sharp rent increases to remain in inner-city suburbs close to many older campuses - traditionally meccas for university students.