The housing crisis is hitting our community hard and the stigma around homelessness is being seen by homeless community members and services as a barrier to integrated ways of addressing it. Morag (pseudonym) shares her story to try and improve community understanding of, and empathy for, the plight of being homeless/unhoused.

Over ten years ago I left my husband and suddenly, I found myself a single parent, thrown into the battle ground of Mount Alexander’s gruelling, dog-eat-dog rental market. I pick up whatever work I can, mostly only casual and part-time — nothing ongoing or stable. In that time my daughter and I have moved home at least ten times. We have couched-surfed at friends’ homes regularly for months on end. I always say that all it takes is a series of unfortunate events. I never for one second of my life, imagined that I would be in this situation. Not in a million years — it was simply something that never, ever crossed my mind.

People don’t know who we are.

There is a very real blanket view of what type of people become homeless or are at risk of becoming homeless and there is always an undercurrent of people thinking that you must have done something wrong, or that you are somehow to blame for your situation.  But how many pay cheques are you away from not being able to pay your mortgage or rent? How many circumstances need to tilt out of your favour for you to find yourself without a home? Anything can happen to anyone but no one is listening to us.

Often, I wake up in terror at 3am, knowing that we must be out of our current rental in 10 days, and I still haven’t managed to secure the next one. The real housing crisis is about sleeping on friends’ couches with your child because there just aren’t enough rentals and of the five affordable rental properties on the market, there will be more than 100 people at each viewing. You can’t establish a community around you because you are always moving, always packing and unpacking boxes filled with your life.

It’s incredibly fatiguing, stressful and humiliating, and has a huge impact on your mental health — it just wears you down.  Everyone should have a home; it is a basic human right. Housing should not be about wealth. There should be more social housing and caps on rental prices, and get rid of negative gearing.

The housing stress is impacting our community. We’re not looking out for each other well enough. People are suffering and yet it’s easy to fix.

Dhelkaya Health’s Housing Senior Clinician Courtney Stephens, My Home Network’s Kaz Neilson and Homelessness Project Officer Jo McMahon from Mount Alexander Shire Council, are working together with a diverse range of organisations to address homelessness and reduce the stigma around it.

Courtney Stephens says: “Currently we have 38 rough sleepers and 80 homeless families in our Shire, and they are just the ones we know about. We need a large increase in transitional housing and crisis accommodation within the Shire, plus additional services to provide wrap around supports for our most vulnerable. As Morag says, homelessness can happen to anyone.”.

Jo McMahon says: “The Mount Alexander community care for each other and want to provide help and support, especially in times of crisis, such as the recent bushfires.  But I think homelessness makes people uncomfortable. As Morag says it is possible for anyone to become homeless.”

“That includes mums and dads, young people, single older women, our co-workers, friends and family,” says Jo. “This community needs to turn towards, not away from issues that challenge us.  We need to see ourselves in the people we may be treating as outsiders, and ensure they are welcome, included and visible.”

Kaz Neilson explains the interconnected drivers of the housing crisis – “They (drivers) are inequity, a lack of social housing, wages and pensions not rising with inflation, mismatch of housing supply and need, and tax and financial mechanisms that compound inequity; family violence and mental health.”

My Home Network advocate for addressing these drivers and are working on local community-led solutions, including appealing to owners of vacant dwellings to release them as affordable rentals. We have 1,200 vacant dwellings in our Shire, releasing some of them would ease some of the rental stress.

For more information on the My Home Network contact cneilson@castlemainehealth.org.au

My Home Network is auspiced by Dhelkaya Health and made up of passionate community members, locals with lived experience of the housing crisis and representatives from local housing initiatives, community and government organisations.