After months spent living week-to-week in a caravan park on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, Rebecca* thought the offer of a permanent home was just what she needed to get her and her two teenage children’s lives back on track.
Instead, the family felt they had little choice but to uproot from their community, change schools, and head to a home 100km away that Rebecca says she found in need of repair and proper cleaning.
“I’ve prided myself on being able to provide for my children and a create a safe and loving home. But due to circumstances outside of our control, we’re being uprooted and placed in a home feeling like we have no other option,” she tells Guardian Australia.
“It’s like we’re being punished.”
About a year ago, Rebecca was working full-time and renting a home on the peninsula. She wouldn’t describe her situation as easy – she had been a single parent for many years after she left the children’s father due to family violence – though they were getting by.
But when she took some time off work to look after the children, who at the time were both struggling with significant health problems, things began to unravel. Rebecca couldn’t afford her rental payments and the children’s growing medical bills while on jobseeker payments.
By September they were living in a caravan park, which was partly funded as crisis accommodation.
It was intended to be a temporary arrangement, but the surge in migration to the area during the pandemic and the popularity of short-stay holiday homes meant she was priced out of the local market.
“There were probably a handful of homes across a 50km stretch that were under $500 a week and you’d go to rental inspections that were crowded with the same people every time,” she says.
The family were placed on Victoria’s public housing waitlist and told to select several areas to better their chances of securing a property. Within six months they were offered a unit in inner Melbourne.
Rebecca was told she couldn’t change her preferred area and her crisis accommodation would no longer be funded if she didn’t take the offer.
“They acted like there was a choice. But that was no choice,” she says.
When she first inspected the property on 28 February, she was horrified by the state of it.
“At the inspection, the windows and doors were so thick with dust you couldn’t see through them. It’s like they cleaned the parts of the kitchen they could reach and then the rest is so thick with grime,” Rebecca says.
“I’m unsure if it’s mould but there was black stuff in the bathroom, the lino was coming up off the floor in the laundry. There was rubbish all over the back yard and the front yard, bits of glass everywhere, a dead bird.”
She raised concerns about the property’s state and was assured it would be refurbished and cleaned before they moved in. The wait dragged on.
This week, after the government was sent questions from Guardian Australia, a clean of the property took place. A fence has been painted, new blinds are installed and some new carpet has been laid. The family are moving in this weekend, as their crisis accommodation ends, though some modifications and repairs are yet to be carried out.
The government has blamed a contractor being absent for the weeks-long delay.
During the wait, Rebecca’s children have missed a term of school and have been unable to access remote learning.
“My kids have now missed a whole term of school for maintenance that could have been done in a week. How has it taken so long?” she says.
The opposition’s spokesperson for housing, Richard Riordan, describes the property as “not habitable and fit … for a new family”.
“I inspected the property myself this week. The apartment is in a poor and unhygienic state and is an embarrassment to the state of Victoria,” he wrote in a letter sent to the minister for housing, Colin Brooks, on Monday.
Riordan says the property was vacant for a year, in which basic maintenance should have been carried out.
“This is an example of very suitable housing for families. It’s got some yard space, it’s well located close to public transport, jobs and schools and opportunities,” he says.
“Yet we’re letting it languish in a way that if this was a private sector property, we’d have tabloid newspapers chasing the landlord down the street wanting comment on the poor state of their building.”
Riordan says he is concerned the government is prioritising its $5.3bn “Big Housing Build” while letting older public housing units “fall into disrepair”.
He cited Barak Beacon in Port Melbourne, which is slated to be demolished and redeveloped as part of the Big Build, after years of neglect. Guardian Australia has previously reported a staged renovation of the Barak Beacon estate could have improved conditions and increased housing stock by 200.
Last year, the state ombudsman also investigated the growing number of complaints by public housing residents, whose properties were in “dire need of repairs”.
“People worried about the lack of maintenance making properties unsafe, and dangerous neighbours not being dealt with, but most commonly, that nothing happened when they tried to complain,” the ombudsman’s report read.
In a statement provided after Rebecca agreed to move into the property, the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing said there was “high demand” for housing across the state.
“The department works with renters and contractors to ensure our public housing stock is safe, habitable and maintained to an acceptable standard,” a spokesperson said.
“As part of our $498m Building Works package, we’re upgrading and improving more than 17,000 public housing homes across the state with new bathrooms, kitchens, roofing, painting and external works.”
As for Rebecca, she says “everything in life happens for a reason” and hopes to make the best of the fresh start with her kids.
“We’re hoping to build a new community around us,” she says.
*Name has been changed to protect privacy
In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 and the domestic abuse helpline is 0808 2000 247. In the US, the suicide prevention lifeline is 1-800-273-8255 and the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). Other international helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org
