Add Category
When a group of strangers paid Joanne's rent for a year, she thought she'd never be homeless again — but she's been thrown another curveball.
When Joanne* shared with the ABC her experience of being a homeless single mum of three, a group of friends, unknown to her, were moved to do something about it.
They contacted Joanne's lawyer and offered to pay her rent for a year in a suburb of her choice.
"I was over the moon," Joanne said.
"I was really emotional because I am not used to that."
The benefactors wanted to remain anonymous and didn't want to know Joanne's real identity to protect her privacy.
"I said to my lawyer, 'can you please just tell them that I'm truly grateful and I will make good use of the fact that I won't be paying rent'," Joanne said.
Joanne's lawyer, Mieke Matimba of the Hobart Community Legal Service, described the generosity of the strangers as a "miracle".
"It was supposed to give the family time to recover both financially and from the trauma of the family violence they had lived through and the compounding trauma from homelessness."
Joanne said after moving between hotels, caravan parks and shelters over 15 months, having a place to call home had made an enormous difference to her family's life.
She went off antidepressants, her children were able to attend school regularly and her eldest child was no longer "ashamed" of being homeless.
"I've got videos of the day we moved into the house and [they were] dancing around. [They were] happy," she said.
Now in her late 30s, Joanne was also able to afford to buy new furniture, for the first time since leaving home at the age of 14.
"I'd set it up beautifully the way I had always wanted … we were all proud," she said.
Cancer diagnosis
But a few months after moving into her new home, Joanne felt a lump in her breast.
She said she was in denial for a while before she made an appointment to see her GP in September last year.
But due to long wait times it wasn't until early this year that she was able to get a mammogram and biopsy which confirmed she had aggressive breast cancer which had spread to a lymph node.
"I just broke down completely, utterly broke down, but then I cleaned myself up pretty quickly and said 'alright, let's do this'," she said.
Joanne has almost finished more than a dozen rounds of chemotherapy and is due to have a double mastectomy in a matter of weeks before starting radiation treatment.
"I'm pretty high spirited and positive, but that was up until the last few weeks and it's really started to take its toll on me now, on my body," she said.
Joanne has told her children about her diagnosis and that she is confident her survival rate is good. But she said on the weekends, after her chemotherapy treatment, she struggles to get out of bed.
"My [children], they're just beautiful. They just care about everything and they do everything for me.
'We've been through enough'
The lease on the property Joanne is living in is about to end.
"It didn't enter my even enter my mind that I would become homeless again," she said.
"We've been through enough and I didn't want to do that again. I didn't want to go back there again, I was so determined."
Joanne had saved some money while she had been living rent free and managed to buy a car for her eldest child who is learning to drive.
She had also planned to look for work but her cancer diagnosis and treatment has made that difficult.
"I promised that I would save enough money to hopefully have a deposit for a house for me and my kids and I've failed. It's really affected me that I can't hold up that promise," she said.
Joanne had hoped to get an extension on her current lease, but with rent at $550 a week and her Centrelink payment around $800 a week, her request was rejected by the real estate company managing the property.
"They see me as a liability."
She said it's a similar story for most private rentals.
A recent report shows the number of affordable rentals across the country has continued to decline.
The PropTrack report shows that the number of rental properties available for under $400 a week nationally has hit a record low, down from 43.2 per cent at the start of the pandemic to just 10.4 per cent in April this year.
Only one in 10 houses in Hobart are less than $400 a week compared with the start of March 2020 when one in five houses in Hobart were less than $400 a week.
In regional parts of the state it's a similar story: in April this year just 39 per cent of properties for rent were affordable compared to 75 per cent in March 2020.
"Near record-low vacancy rates, reflecting strong demand and limited new supply, has created exceptionally challenging conditions for renters.," PropTrack senior economist Paul Ryan said.
"This is particularly problematic for lower income households for whom almost no rental properties are affordable."
Joanne had been on the wait list for public housing for three years, before she was gifted free rent for a year.
There were 4,710 families waiting for public housing in Tasmania in March this year. The average time to house priority applicants is more than a year and a half.
"Because of the number of people that sit in the priority pool alongside (Joanne) it doesn't become urgent in the housing world until she is actually homeless," Ms Matimba said.
It means that when Joanne's lease ends, she and her kids will head to a women's shelter, if there is room for them. If not, it could be back to moving between hotels and other brokered accommodation.
"I feel frustrated. [Joanne] and the kids have been through so much, none of it their fault. She's not bitter," Ms Matimba said.
"They have continued to get up after each knock down, always looking forward. It shouldn't be this hard to survive in our community,"
Rethinking addressing the housing shortfall
The federal government has promised to build 1.2 million new homes by 2030. The Tasmanian government has also promised to build 10,000 social and affordable homes by 2032.
But Ms Matimba said the long-term strategy needed a rethink.
"There are more creative ways of addressing the critical need for housing now at a faster pace with a lower budget," she said.
She said while families such as Joanne's need multiple-room homes, not everyone on the housing wait list does.
Ms Matimba suggested pre-fabricated single-room dwellings with a bathroom and heater would ease the pressure on the housing wait list.
"There are people waiting now who have been on the list for years, who are in and out of shelters, in and out of caravan parks or sleeping on the street or in their cars," she said.
Ms Matimba is doing what she can to help Joanne by calling support services, contacting state Housing Minister Felix Ellis, searching for a private rental and setting up a GoFundMe page.
In a statement, Mr Ellis said the government is "committed to working closely with Tasmanians who require support".
"Our Housing Connect service is there for anybody who is currently experiencing or at risk of homelessness and can be contacted on 1800 800 588," he said.
Mr Ellis said women and their children "can access many of the 20 homeless shelters in Tasmania and the 50 homes currently secured under the Family Violence Rapid Rehousing program, in addition to social housing and private rental assistance".
"We are delivering an extra 100 homes for women and children escaping family violence, in addition to the recently completed work to double the capacity of the Launceston Women's Shelter; 17 additional units at the Hobart Women's Shelter; eight new units at CatholicCare Women's Shelter; two new units at Jireh House and six additional units currently under construction for McCombe House.
"So we can help more at-risk families transition to secure housing, we have also delivered 3,375 social and affordable homes in the last four years towards our target of 10,000 homes by 2032.
"Our government's modular homes (ModHomes) program is an innovative approach we use as part of delivering new housing, which means more homes are being built faster."
Loading...