A section with key insights from PetRescue's 2025 guardian-assisted rehoming program report: Finding another way home

Differences in challenges and patterns by state and territory

The dataset is most robust for Victoria and New South Wales, reasonably strong for Queensland and Western Australia, and limited for states with fewer applications. Trends from these states should be interpreted with caution.

Household and pet demographics

Home2Home application characteristics by state and territory

Further detail is provided in Appendix Table A5: Home2Home application characteristics by state and territory, including ownership duration and short-term retention capacity.

Most Home2Home applications come from Victoria (44%) and New South Wales (40.1%). The program was initially piloted in Victoria, with NSW being the second state in which Home2Home was available, which explains why these two states have a significantly higher number of applications than all others. The distribution of applications across the remaining states broadly reflects the typical usage pattern of PetRescue.com by member organisations listing pets for rehoming.

Victoria is the only state in which cats made up the majority of Home2Home applications (50%). In all other states, dogs accounted for at least 50% of applications. This likely reflects differences in the availability of other rehoming pathways for adult cats in Victoria, as highlighted in the 2025 State of Pet Adoption Report.

The average SEIFA score for Home2Home guardians varies by state and territory, generally following median household incomes as reported in the 2021 Census (ABS Census Income and Work), with the exception of Victoria. While Victoria ranked second behind the ACT in mean SEIFA score for Home2Home guardians, it is ranked fifth in median household income.

Across all states, the majority of pet guardians were able to keep their pets for at least a month from the time of application. The highest proportions were observed in the ACT (85%), Victoria (83.7%), and NSW (80%), while the lowest were in Queensland (69%) and the Northern Territory (62.5%). This pattern generally aligns with the ranking of states based on median household income, as reported by the ABS (ABS Personal Income Australia).

Statistically significant differences were observed between some states across all factors reported by guardians as drivers for seeking rehoming assistance through Home2Home. As only Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia had sufficient application numbers, differences in rehoming drivers are reported for these states only.

Further detail is provided in Appendix Table A6: Reasons for seeking rehoming assistance by state & territory.

State-based differences in reasons for seeking rehoming assistance

Victoria

Guardians in Victoria reported a lower incidence of rental or landlord issues, but there was no difference compared to other states when it came to finding new accommodation (e.g., moving or relocating).

Contributing factors include:

• Victorian rental reforms (2020), which prevent landlords from unreasonably excluding pets and place the onus on landlords to seek VCAT approval to refuse a tenant’s request.
   
• A greater portion of high-income cat guardians in Victoria compared to other states, which may result in fewer housing-related challenges.
   
• Guardians in Victoria were almost twice as likely as those in other major states to report litterbox issues as a driver for rehoming their cat.
  • Partially explained by a higher proportion of cat guardians (~30% higher than other major states).
     
  • May also reflect a higher incidence of litterbox problems in Victorian cats or fewer pathways for managing cats with these issues, or both.

New South Wales

• NSW guardians were less likely than other states to seek rehoming assistance due to compliance issues related to excess pet numbers and containment. These issues mainly concern cat management, and many local governments in NSW do not currently enforce cat-centric laws.
   
• Guardians were twice as likely to report rental and landlord issues as drivers for rehoming and had among the highest frequency of difficulties finding pet-friendly accommodation when moving, reflecting a highly competitive rental market compared to the rest of Australia.
   
• NSW guardians reported mental health as a driver of seeking assistance 25–33% less often than other major states, a difference larger than expected based on variations in mental health services. Possible contributing factors include:
  • Natural disasters impacting populations in NSW and QLD (see: Landshape 2017–2022)
     
  • Other drivers of rehoming may overshadow the impact of mental health challenges in this cohort.
     
  • Per capita mental health spending in 2022–2023 was the lowest for NSW ($278) and second lowest for QLD ($288), compared to $329+ in other states/territories, which may mean a lack of community support leads some guardians to seek surrender options other than guardians -assisted rehoming.

Queensland

Guardians in QLD (and to a lesser extent Victoria) were more likely to seek rehoming assistance due to predatory behaviour, mostly in dogs.

Two main dog cohorts contribute to this:

• Working sighthounds (race-bred greyhounds), ~10,000 pups bred per year, predominantly in Victoria and NSW (Size and Scope of Greyhound Racing in Australasia)
   
• Large dogs used for pig hunting, especially in QLD and NSW, where dogs are legally allowed to bite and restrain live pigs, with ~780,000 puppies per year produced by the recreational hunting sector (The Welfare of Pig-Hunting Dogs in Australia).

Dogs displaying high predatory behaviour may be deemed unsuitable for their working roles and then enter the pet dog supply chain, which likely explains the higher frequency of predation issues reported by QLD guardians.

Western Australia

• Guardians from WA were notably less likely to seek rehoming assistance due to financial hardship than those from Vic, NSW, and Qld, despite the SEIFA deciles and mean scores for Victoria and NSW being higher than WA.
   
• WA had a significantly higher frequency of guardians seeking rehoming help due to work commitments compared to all other states.
   
• High proportion of FIFO workers and the geographic dispersion of the state likely contribute to the higher number of guardians whose work commitments limit their capacity to keep pets.

Australian Capital Territory

• Guardians from the ACT were 7.5 to 15 times more likely than other states to report compliance issues related to banned breeds or species, despite being among the most compliant with desexing, microchipping and vaccinating. This was largely driven by cat guardians moving into or within the ACT, where territory-wide cat confinement requirements and blanket cat bans apply.

Note: ACT data is limited, but this finding was still statistically significant compared to other states and territories.

Multiple State Interactions

• Guardians in WA & QLD reported family and domestic violence (FDV) more than 3x as often as those from Victoria & NSW.
   
• The greater accessibility of pet-inclusive support options for FDV survivors in Victoria & NSW may influence these differences.

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