Q: How much Rent Assistance could I get if I received a single Age Pension, bought a $425,000 land-lease home and created an income stream from $170,000?

A: Rent Assistance is not based on how much Age Pension you receive; you can receive a relatively small amount of Age Pension but still receive the full amount of Rent Assistance. That said, you do need to be receiving an eligible pension or allowance, so self-funded retirees cannot claim rent assistance. As an Age Pensioner, the amount of Rent Assistance you can receive in a land-lease community is based on the amount of rent you pay, which is known at such communities as your ‘site fees’.

As a single person, once your site fees are more than $124.60 per fortnight, Rent Assistance will be paid at 75 cents per dollar of fees paid over this threshold up to a maximum payment of $139.60 per fortnight. To be eligible for the maximum amount of Rent Assistance, you would need to be paying site fees of $310.73 per fortnight or more. Or, put another way, if you paid $311 per fortnight in site fees, Rent Assistance would cover $139 so the out of pocket cost to you would be $172 per fortnight.