As actor Funda Sirinkal beamed on Turkish TV, she was a world away, sleeping rough with her son in a Melbourne park.
She was struggling, unable to find a job or a home for her and her three-year-old in the city of her birth.
“One real estate agent, she was from Turkey, and I wrote her a letter saying who I am: ‘Maybe your mum is watching me on TV right now. Please help me, I am desperate’,” Sirinkal says.
Sirinkal had left Turkey in 2016, after an acrimonious split with her husband. She had finished filming Rüzgarın Kalbi, or Heartbeat – a soap opera about a rich young man falling in love with the recipient of his dead fiancee’s heart. She made the decision to move to Australia due to the separation and the struggle to find work amid a government crackdown after a failed coup attempt.
“I couldn’t find any job. I was kind of blacklisted,” she says, citing a petition she signed along with hundreds of academics and well-known Turkish people that called for the government to make peace with Kurdish militants.
“They knew I am a unionist, they knew I am an activist, so people didn’t want to work with me. They didn’t want to go against the government.”
When they arrived in Australia, the duo bounced from a hotel room to a room rented from an older couple and then a home in Moonee Ponds, which cost her $300 a week. On a parenting payment, it meant Sirinkal was left with $75 a week to cover basics like food, public transport and bills.
“I was going to Vinnies and the Salvation Army for food vouchers and meals. I never thought in my life I was going to be in this situation,” she says.
For a brief period, the duo slept in Carlton Gardens – Sirinkal’s son in his pram – as they tried to secure an affordable rental. Back in Turkey, Rüzgarın Kalbi was airing on TV.
“Nobody was giving me a place because I don’t have rent history, but how can I have rent history when I just arrived in Australia?” she says.
“I was going to all the real estate agents, filling in all the forms and getting rejection, rejection, rejection.”
A parliamentary inquiry into homelessness last year found the key drivers include family violence, the high cost of housing and the lack of social housing stock.
Those most at risk of homelessness, it found, are renters.
“Simply put, housing costs too much for people on low incomes,” the report says.
Sarah Toohey, the chief executive of the Community Housing Industry Association of Victoria, says the economic insecurity of women throughout their lives make them particularly vulnerable to homelessness and housing stress.
“There’s a reason older women have been the fastest-growing group of people experiencing homelessness in recent years. It’s the accumulation of a lifetime of lower wages, career breaks, putting in less superannuation,” Toohey says.
“It all means there’s less to fall back on when there is a separation or if they do lose their jobs later in life.”
Toohey is urging the state and federal governments to do more for single parents.
“The median rent in Melbourne now is something like $400 a week, so for people relying on income support, that’s simply not enough to cover the rent and cover the costs of looking after and feeding your children and yourself,” she says.
“We really need to be having a look at single parents in this situation because the impact of caring responsibilities on your ability to secure employment is absolutely huge – even if your children are in school, even if you can get affordable care. There’s not a lot of buffer when things go wrong.”
She says the Victorian government’s recently announced overhaul of four-year-old kinder is a good start, given it helps women balance caring responsibilities with work.
As for Sirinkal, she applied for an affordable housing place with Women’s Housing Limited – a community housing provider – in 2017 and within months was allocated one of 20 units in Newport, dedicated to women and children escaping family violence or women aged over 55.
Unlike public housing, which is owned and managed by the state government, community housing is managed by not-for-profit organisations. To qualify as affordable, rent is capped at 30% of a household’s income.
Sirinkal describes the units as a “village”.
“There are other single mums here – all amazing people – and we have created a great supportive community,” she says.
“Sometime we’ll be knocking on each other’s doors to ask for an onion or to look after each other’s kids while we pop to the supermarket.”
The Victorian government is building a similar project in St Albans, in Melbourne’s west, for women at risk of homelessness, as part of its $5.3bn “big build” – a commitment to provide 12,000 social and affordable homes.
Construction on the project began in December and is expected to be completed by the end of 2023.
The development – which will deliver 53 social housing homes, with a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom apartment – will house about 100 women and children escaping family violence, as well as women over 55.
“The St Albans development is part of our record investment in new social and affordable housing across the state, providing homes for women who need them most,” the minister for housing, Richard Wynne, says.
Sirinkal says she no longer feels poor or vulnerable. She now has a car and drops her son off at school. Mosts days, she drives home via the beach.
“You are living in a nice area with wealthy people and you feel worthy of it all. It’s incredible how important that is,” she says.
