The Brimbank resident, who lives in an unregistered rooming house with three other tenants, keeps what little food he has inside his room that has only a mattress, a barely-working television and some clothes.

Peter, not his real name, moved to the area from Heidelberg earlier this year and is unemployed.

The 37-year-old pays $180 a week for rent, leaving him with $18.50 for food.

He has been to jail three times this year for shoplifting food and said he survived on noodles, jam and Vegemite.

The old weatherboard house he lives in only has a kitchen with a table and two chairs, a bathroom and four bedrooms. There is no laundry or lounge room because they were converted into bedrooms by the landlord.

Peter said there were plans to convert the backyard's shed into another bedroom. The four residents share one bathroom which has one shower.

He said all of his housemates were heroin addicts, and one suffered from mental illness.

A former addict, Peter said he had been clean for the past year.

He is trying to put his life back on track, but felt alone because he had no family and most of his friends were drug users. He said living in such conditions was far from easy and wished the landlord had informed him about the state of his housemates before moving in.

"The other two blokes never come out of the bedroom as they're afraid of what this one bloke with mental illness might do to them," Peter said.

''I wasn't informed by the landlord about him - what would happen if I had a fight with him? He needs to be in a mental facility, not here."

The Doncaster-born man, who began using drugs when he was aged 26, said life wasn't always so hard and he once had his own business.

Peter said the last time he was sent to jail was for two weeks after he stole a chocolate bar from a supermarket. He said he often went days without decent food, having to also find money for child support and methadone medication to overcome his drug addiction.