Older Queensland women tell their hardship experiences to support group Sharing with Friends.
Footage from Sharing with Friends
Footage from Sharing with Friends
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 I knew that I wasn't the only person in this situation. I understood that there were many
00:10 structural issues across my lifetime that led me to be in a place along with over 400,000
00:17 women in Australia who find themselves in a similar situation at the moment.
00:22 What am I going to do? Do I just have to keep working and working and working until I drop
00:26 or is it possible for me to get something? There's nothing. Nobody will loan money to
00:32 you at my age and yet you still have to pay those enormous rents just to get by week after
00:40 week. I rent a granny flat attached to a main house.
00:45 Yeah, looking for alternative solutions and rent affordability is out of the realms of
00:52 possibility and I don't have enough funds to buy a house outright. Ideally I'd love
00:58 a safe, affordable, secure place to call my own and that's what I'm seeking.
01:03 So it occurred to me in these last few years when I had a second experience of virtually
01:09 nearly being homeless myself where I lost my job and a house I'd rented for 25 years
01:15 all in the same week. So that left me in a situation where I didn't have a job, I'd
01:21 paid 30 applications for private housing options and I couldn't get any house. I had two dogs
01:30 and I couldn't find anywhere to live. Until recently I was living in a tower in
01:34 a high-rise. There were 100 people there but you hardly ever saw your neighbours unless
01:42 you happened to meet at the lift or in the car park. You were living in a fairly isolated
01:48 situation actually. In all the places I've been it's just been
01:54 individuals living in their own little world and I felt that this was something that would
02:05 give me a bit of community as I don't have any family of my own and no one would really
02:15 notice if I wasn't around. That's why I am wanting to get a house that
02:24 I can call my own now while I am still working because once I stop working I will probably
02:33 be going on pension mostly. I have superannuation but it's not a lot of superannuation. So I
02:43 really want to get myself set up, particularly being an older woman, I'm 62, I want to be
02:50 set up and have something that I can go 'ah, this is a roof over my head'.
02:57 Having a house, a secure place to live where you can keep being a contributor to community
03:02 life, you can still be connected socially, you're not alone, I think is a wonderful concept
03:09 and really part of my commitment to community which I've been working to build all my professional
03:16 life.
03:17 [BLANK_AUDIO]