A free service that helps Victorian home owners in mortgage stress has been forced to temporarily close its books, the ABC reports, after the number of people calling for help doubled — and with interest rates sitting at a 15-year high after Tuesday's rise, the organisation expects the queue to keep growing.

Mortgage Stress Victoria chief executive Nadia Harrison said the organisation was facing "overwhelming demand" as rate rises piled onto other costs such as insurance, groceries and fuel, and that severe financial stress was reaching new parts of the community. "We've seen a doubling of people reaching out for assistance between January and August this financial year," Ms Harrison said. "This is the greatest demand we've ever seen."

The profile of who is asking for help is the striking part. The service's latest data shows more than half of its clients are employed rather than on welfare, and some are seeking financial assistance for the first time. "We service a cohort of clients who are at risk of homelessness, so to have a majority of clients that are employed, it shows that the problem is really extensive throughout the population," Ms Harrison said. With demand expected to keep building in coming months, the service has paused new intakes for all but those who need the most urgent help.

The strain shows up across the sector. The National Debt Helpline took calls from 4,153 people in August, up from 2,990 at the same time last year.

The postcodes under the most pressure

Data analytics firm Digital Finance Analytics — which defines mortgage stress in cashflow terms, as a household with more outgoings than income, based on phone surveys extrapolated with census data — listed Narre Warren, Cranbourne, Roxburgh Park, Pakenham and Ballarat as the five postcodes with the highest number of affected households in Victoria at the end of August. Several Melbourne growth corridors, the ABC reports, are among those suffering the most widespread mortgage stress in the country.

Behind the postcode counts are households doing fortnightly triage. Horsham pensioners Annie and Andrew Nikkelson told the ABC that paying the mortgage was increasingly tough. "We've sort of got to prioritise — each fortnight we've got to work out what gets paid and what doesn't get paid," Ms Nikkelson said. Her husband said they were living from day to day: "If we can afford to get food, we get food. If we can't afford it, well we just scrounge what we've got in the freezer left over until we've got money where we can get more food." If rates rise again, he said, "We'd definitely have to sit back and think whether we keep the house or get rid of it."

April Shortis, also in Horsham, said her family was tightening the belt after the latest rise, on top of higher council rates. "You have to decide what you're going to pay for — you know, do we get new shoes for the kids now or do we put it off for a few weeks?" she said. Another rise in November, she said, would mean "a very sad Christmas".

The squeeze is not confined to the growth corridors. In South Yarra, Steve Whittington is struggling to hold onto the home he has owned for 25 years after losing his job in April. "Sometimes I Airbnb the whole house, like at the moment," the father of two said, adding that at other times he rents out just his ensuite bedroom and sleeps in his daughter's room. "But that's only $100 a night or whatever, so that's not a solution."

A sliver of relief in the inflation numbers

Wednesday's consumer price index reading offered a hedged kind of hope. Annual headline inflation jumped to 4 per cent in August, up from 3.5 per cent in July, according to the Bureau of Statistics — but that was slightly below the 4.1 per cent economists had predicted, and the ABC reports the odds of the Reserve Bank lifting rates again in November have fallen sharply as a result. CPA Australia business investment lead Gavan Ord was blunter about the near term: inflation remains "stubbornly persistent", he said. "Until inflationary pressures ease, households and businesses should expect interest rates to remain high, and possibly go higher."