A FEW months ago, I was contacted by a distressed single mother, who had been looking for a home for her family for well over a year.
She wanted to tell her story, hoping that it might open a door somewhere, anywhere, to put a roof over the heads of her three children.
The problem was she couldn’t tell her story publicly. She had escaped a domestic violence situation and fled to Mildura from interstate. She needed to keep her identity and location secret.
“So what do I do? Where do I turn? I’ve tried everything,” this brave woman said to me.
Since moving to Mildura, she had successfully enrolled her children in a local school and found herself a job, determined to make this town her home and provide her children with stability.
But with no child support payments from her abusive ex-partner, finding and affording an appropriate rental had, to this point, proved impossible.
I remember the conversation distinctly because it struck me how hopeless this woman’s situation had become. What a desperate place she found herself in.
This loving mum had been moving between various shelters in Mildura with her children for more than a year, while her ex-partner remained living in the family home they had fled.
My fear was, like so many others, she may give up all hope and return to the domestic violence situation she had escaped.
This single mum’s situation is far from uncommon. In fact, she is among an ever-growing list of people in this community looking for a place to live, for many and varied reasons. Escaping violence is just one of them.
Mildura’s social housing waiting list has grown from about 700 people to more than 1070 in the last 18 months.
More than 500 of those are on the priority waiting list.
It is a dire situation impacting on the most vulnerable members of our community.
In the meantime, our social housing providers are being forced to wait at least another month to learn whether the Albanese government’s Housing Australia Future Fund will even pass the Upper House.
Under the proposal, $10 billion would be invested into the future fund, and investment returns would support the delivery of 30,000 social and affordable homes in the fund’s first five years.
But while our well-paid pollies dither over the proposal, and the housing crisis across the country deepens, the question remains: is it enough?
Mildura councillor Stefano de Pieri doesn’t think so.
“What will 30,000 homes across all of Australia over five years do? It will be a drop in the ocean,” he said. “And how many will be built here in Mildura?”
Cr de Pieri believes it’s time for the community to start taking some ownership of the issue, and not wait for the federal or state governments to fix it for us.
“The cavalry isn’t coming,” he said last week.
Cr de Pieri wants council to set aside a million dollars a year for 10 years to help address the region’s housing crisis.
It’s a bold idea and one that was met with expected criticism on social media this week.
Many argued that funding social housing is a federal or state issue, not a local council one.
And many rightly asked where the money would be coming from, particularly when Mildura residents already pay among the highest rates in the state.
The solutions are admittedly complex.
But Cr de Pieri deserves credit for putting the issue on the agenda.
How this community helps our most vulnerable should be front of mind. It is a conversation we should be having.
The single mum who rang me wanted help. She needed answers.
How tragic that, in this day and age, we can provide her neither.
