Commonwealth Rent Assistance - single, no dependent child

What Is This Payment?

Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA) for a single renter without dependent children is tagged in the rule database as a monetary primary federal benefit in the Commonwealth Rent Assistance cluster. The entitlement scope is per-person and ongoing. CRA is a supplementary payment: it sits on top of a primary income support payment such as JobSeeker, Age Pension, Disability Support Pension, Carer Payment, Parenting Payment, Youth Allowance, Austudy, ABSTUDY, or Family Tax Benefit Part A above the base rate. There is no stand-alone path; the qualifying payment is what carries the eligibility forward.

The administering body is Services Australia. CRA is integrated into the Centrelink record. When a customer updates their accommodation details inside the Centrelink online account through myGov, or by calling the relevant Services Australia line, the system runs the CRA rule alongside the underlying entitlement and adjusts the next fortnight's payment automatically. The application channels recorded in the rule are online and service centre.

The design intent of this specific rule is the simplest CRA case: a single adult who rents from a private landlord, lives by themselves (or in a non-shared arrangement such as a self-contained granny flat), and has no dependent children to bring into the calculation. Sibling rules in the same cluster handle the lower sharer rate, the higher with-child rate, and the partnered combinations including illness-separated and temporarily separated couples. A change in any of those signals routes the case to a different rule rather than altering the formula inside this one.

How Much Can You Get?

The amount block is defined as fixed, paid fortnightly. The rule value is $219.40 per fortnight, which is the maximum payable cap. The corresponding annual ceiling is approximately $5,704.40 across 26 fortnights, although CRA is always assessed and paid on a fortnightly cadence rather than as an annual lump sum.

The rule note records two driving thresholds: the minimum rent of $154.80 per fortnight before any payment begins, and the maximum-rate rent of $447.34 per fortnight at which the cap is reached. Between those two figures, payment scales linearly. The amount note states the formula directly: payable equals min($219.40, 0.75 times max(0, fortnightly rent minus $154.80)).

You can audit any estimate with five steps:

1. Confirm the underlying qualifying payment is current (without it, CRA does not exist).
2. Identify the fortnightly rent amount; if rent is paid weekly multiply by 2 to convert.
3. Subtract the $154.80 minimum rent threshold. If the result is zero or negative, CRA is zero.
4. Multiply the excess by 0.75 to get the raw entitlement.
5. Apply the cap at $219.40; whichever is smaller becomes the fortnightly CRA payment.

The output display period in the rule is yearly, which simply means downstream summary screens roll the fortnightly figure into an annualised projection. The fortnightly mechanic remains primary for assessment. The rule has empty multiplier, empty reduces_if, and empty date_windows, so there are no extra multiplicative loadings, no income-driven CRA-specific tapers (income tapering happens upstream on the qualifying payment, not on CRA itself), and no date-sliced rate variants in this version.

The 75-cents-per-dollar slope is sometimes shorthanded as the three-quarters rule. It explains why CRA helps most where rent is moderate but not extreme: a renter paying exactly $300 per fortnight receives $108.90 (which is 0.75 multiplied by $145.20), whereas a renter paying $500 per fortnight receives the full $219.40 because that rent passes the $447.34 ceiling.

Eligibility Conditions

The eligibility block is an all set, so every item must pass.

1. Qualifying primary payment: receiving_qualifying_payment = true. The qualifying list includes JobSeeker, Age Pension, Disability Support Pension, Carer Payment, Parenting Payment, Youth Allowance, Austudy, ABSTUDY, and FTB Part A above the base rate. Without one of these, CRA cannot be paid because it is structurally an add-on.
2. Private rental: is_renting_private = true. Community housing, retirement village ongoing service fees, and boat mooring fees count; rent paid to a state public housing authority does not count.
3. Single status: partner_status = single. Partnered cases route to one of the couple CRA rules.
4. No dependent children: dependent_children = false. Renters with dependent children flow to the higher with-child rate rules.
5. Not share accommodation: is_share_accommodation = false. Share-house cases route to the sharer rule with a lower cap.
6. Rent above threshold: rent_fortnightly > 154.80. The rule uses a strict greater-than comparison; rent equal to $154.80 does not trigger payment.

Required fields are explicit: partner status, dependent children, private renting, fortnightly rent, qualifying payment status, and share accommodation flag. These six fields are typically already on the Centrelink record because they are also required for the underlying primary payment, which keeps the assessment frictionless.

The exclude block is empty for this rule, which mirrors the design pattern: routing happens through the eligibility list rather than through exclusions. A change of partner status, the addition of a dependent child, or a move into a share house would each fail one of the eligibility items above and the system would attempt to match a sibling rule instead.

Two practical considerations from the rule notes deserve emphasis. First, CRA is not a stand-alone application - when the customer applies for or updates their primary payment, CRA is auto-assessed using the same accommodation data; manual CRA-only claims are not part of the channel set. Second, rent changes must be reported to Centrelink so the formula keeps producing the right number; an unreported rent rise leaves the customer underpaid and an unreported rent fall creates an overpayment to be reconciled later.

How To Apply

Application metadata defines two channels: online and service centre. The same channels that handle the primary payment claim handle CRA, because CRA does not have its own application form. Once accommodation details are recorded, Services Australia evaluates this rule against the underlying entitlement and pays the supplement together with the next fortnightly instalment.

Evidence requirements are explicit in the rule and should be prepared in advance:

• lease agreement or rent proof - typically a written tenancy agreement signed by all parties; rent receipts or a Rent Certificate signed by the landlord can be substituted where no formal lease exists

Two practical tips. First, lodge the rent details inside the Centrelink online account at the moment of moving in, not weeks later - backdating CRA is possible only within tight windows and missing weeks are not made up indefinitely. Second, if the rent figure on the lease includes utilities or board, only the portion attributable to rent is counted; some claimants overstate by including bills or food and end up with a flagged record after a routine review.

Update rent details on the official Services Australia page

Rule-Based Scenarios

Scenario 1: full-rate cap, JobSeeker recipient

Conor is 34, single, no dependent children, on JobSeeker after a redundancy. He moved into a small apartment paying $510 per fortnight to a private landlord. Because $510 is well above $447.34, the formula caps at $219.40. Each fortnight his JobSeeker payment is followed by a separate CRA line of $219.40, so the rent assistance lifts his housing budget by the full amount the cluster allows for this household type.

Scenario 2: partial rate, Age Pension recipient

Ailsa is 71, widowed, single, no dependent children at home, receiving the single Age Pension. She rents a one-bedroom flat for $300 per fortnight from a private landlord. Excess rent above $154.80 is $145.20. Multiplying by 0.75 gives $108.90, which is below the $219.40 cap so it becomes the payable amount. CRA pays her $108.90 each fortnight on top of the Age Pension.

Scenario 3: not eligible because rent is too low

Bjorn is on Disability Support Pension and lives in a regional town where his rent is $140 per fortnight to a private landlord. The strict eligibility item rent_fortnightly > 154.80 fails, so CRA returns zero. The DSP itself is unaffected; only the rent supplement is blocked because the rent does not clear the minimum threshold for any payable amount.

Scenario 4: routed to a different rule

Solveig is single, on Youth Allowance, and shares a kitchen and bathroom with two flatmates who are not related to her. She pays $260 per fortnight as her share. Her case fails is_share_accommodation = false in this rule, so the engine routes her to the sharer rule with a $146.27 cap. She still receives CRA, just under a different rule with a lower headline rate.

Common Mistakes

• Assuming CRA is a stand-alone payment: applicants try to claim CRA directly without holding any qualifying primary payment. The rule requires receiving_qualifying_payment = true; without JobSeeker, Age Pension, DSP, Carer Payment, Parenting Payment, Youth Allowance, Austudy, ABSTUDY, or FTB Part A above the base, there is nothing for CRA to attach to and no payment can begin.
• Counting public housing rent: tenants of state public housing assume any rent paid qualifies. The rule excludes state public housing because it is already subsidised; only private rental, community housing, retirement village service fees, or boat mooring fees count under is_renting_private = true.
• Reading the headline as a flat top-up: $219.40 is a maximum, not a guaranteed amount regardless of rent. The cap is reached only when fortnightly rent is at or above $447.34. Below that, the 75-cents-per-dollar slope produces a smaller figure, and rent at or below $154.80 produces zero.
• Confusing share with private: single tenants in a share house file under the no-sharer rule by default. Living arrangements where unrelated adults share kitchen or bathroom facilities push the assessment to the sharer rule with a $146.27 cap and around one-third less in the pocket.
• Forgetting to report rent changes: a rent increase is not picked up automatically. Customers must update rent details inside the Centrelink online account; an unreported $40 rent rise can leave $30 per fortnight of CRA on the table for months.
• Including utilities and board in the rent figure: CRA is calculated on the rent component only. Tenants who tell Centrelink the full inclusive figure, including electricity, gas, internet, or board with meals, can trigger a debt later when the figure is corrected during a review.

Related Benefits

The conflicts list in this rule names the other CRA cluster variants that are mutually exclusive with this one. The qualifying-payment requirement also creates structural relationships with the underlying income support rules and with the concession card stack that follows pension-type payments.

• Commonwealth Rent Assistance - single, no child, share accommodation - direct conflict; share-house tenants route here at the lower $146.27 cap.
• Commonwealth Rent Assistance - single, 1-2 dependent children - higher per-fortnight cap once a dependent child enters the household.
• Commonwealth Rent Assistance - couple, no dependent child (combined) - partnered version with combined cap and a different rent threshold.
• JobSeeker Payment - single, 22+, no dependent child - the most common qualifying primary payment for this CRA variant.
• Age Pension - single - a pension-type qualifying payment that auto-attaches CRA when the pensioner rents privately.
• Health Care Card (HCC) - auto-issued with most qualifying primary payments and runs alongside the same CRA stream.

Frequently Asked Questions