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Three women who returned to the family home to care for their mother acknowledge that they still face an uncertain future, knowing that the family home will eventually be sold, to either fund a place in a nursing home for their mother or as a deceased estate with the money to be shared with their siblings.

Where's my life going when mum's not around, I have to work. I don't have enough superannuation. How am I going to care for her when she gets worse?. If she needs to go into care, we would have to sell the house. What happens to me then? P5 aged 56

My mother has left a provision in her will that my brother, who also shares her house, and I can stay in her house after she dies until we find stable housing. I know my other brother and sister are not happy with this decision and may cause trouble after she goes. P11 aged 55

For the three women still living in their own homes uncertainty comes from the rising expenses of home maintenance.

Recently when I was recovering from cancer, I couldn't climb the stairs to the upper level. I looked at all the house renovations that needed to be done and selling and moving back with my elderly parents was an option I considered. P2 aged 62

I did have a house. I did wonder how I was going to maintain it, so I made a decision to move from a house into a unit. I think if I still had been in that house, I would have been sitting on a much better-valued property. P10 aged 70

Last year I was retrenched and spent twelve months looking for work. During that time I became very stressed and finally decided to retire from the work force. I have limited

superannuation so I made a decision to sell my unit in an inner city area and I bought a cheaper unit further away. I hope that this decision works out okay in the long term.

P19 aged 62

Of the twenty women interviewed, three women currently live in their own home; ten women live in social housing, four rent privately and three live with their mother. Eleven of the women had previously owned a home with or without a partner. Three women have moved back to the family home. Two of these women care for their mother. For one woman it was the fourth time she has moved back to the family home, while for another trying to live on the sickness benefits allowance and pay rent was the final straw that led her to apply for social housing. For one woman with a child, who is currently spending 80 per cent of her disability pension on rent, trying to access social housing is a long process.

If I could get it together and go and see a psychiatrist – because apparently there's a hierarchy – they want a letter from a psychiatrist saying that housing instability is making my condition worse, I could probably push myself up to a very high need. So there's stages and steps that you have to go through, and you have to be quite organised. You have to be very strategic, and then you tell the doctor what you want. You've got to play the game, and I don't know how you would manage to do that if you're not compos mentis. P14 aged 45

I feel very vulnerable coming home for yet another time in my life to start again. My sense of independence has gone. P11 aged 55

I was on sickness benefits. The reason I survived in the past was that I was sharing, but now, once you live in private rental, paying $300 a week rent, how can you find that? P8 aged 58

Of the women interviewed sixteen spoke of their experience of ‘home', and what it meant to them in the past and what it means to them in their present situation. Seven women who had previously owned their own home spoke of the grief of walking away from the marital home, and leaving everything behind, of selling it as part of a divorce settlement or after the death of a partner. One woman experienced the drama of having to quickly leave the house that she had previously owned and then co-owned with her son after he threatened her. After her daughter attended a forum on homelessness and told one of the organisers that her mother was being threatened in her own home, the organisation offered them immediate emergency housing. She later was told that what she had endured for a number of years was called elder abuse. For a woman who was recovering from a stroke after a long stay in hospital, staying with her sister in a small unit was proving difficult.

After a couple of months of couch-surfing, the cracks appeared with my sister, and after an argument, I took off and thought I would sleep in the park. I was too scared, so I went back to the unit and slept on the balcony. That's when I went to the social worker again and said ‘I have to move out'. P6 aged 53

My daughter and I had three days to get out and move into a safe house. We had to give so much away, and there were a lot of things we had to throw out. P17 aged 68

After my marriage break-up, I had to sell the house, and sell everything that I owned because I couldn't take it with me. I had nowhere to go. I did have my share of the money in the house. I was uneducated. I didn't know how to manage, so a married couple invited me to live with them. I stayed with them for twelve months. P9 aged 78

For others, who had previously rented, it was the despair of the downward spiral of having to move because the next rental increase meant they could no longer afford to live in a particular suburb or a particular style of housing. The final indignity was having to resort to couch-

surfing. Two women, who had previously stayed with family or friends, found they were no longer welcome.

I was desperate as I had to move out of the house I was renting. I had no money. No one was going to help me because I had pissed everyone off. My ex-husband, my daughter and my sister, weren't talking to me and my parents were pretty fed up with me. P14 aged 45

All my friends didn’t want to share. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. P8 aged 58

Due to a change in circumstance, three women moved from their social housing unit to private rental for a period of time. They then found themselves in situations that led them back to social housing. A woman who left a marriage when her children were young put her name on the housing list when her eldest child was five years old. She finally was given a Housing Commission house when her eldest daughter was seventeen and lost it when her younger daughter turned sixteen – three years later.

I would ring sometimes, and they'd just say "nothing's here for you". I didn't know that you had to be proactive. I thought it would just happen. P6 aged 53

At the time of the interviews, two women had recently moved back to social housing while another (aged 45 years), is currently paying 80 per cent of her pension on rent. Her ten-year- old daughter is staying with a relative until she finds stable/affordable accommodation for them both. Three of the women had lived in Housing Commission accommodation during their childhood while the other women interviewed had previously not anticipated that the day would ever come when they would need to apply for social housing.

Six women had been allocated their permanent accommodation during the past year. Two of them had been homeless and couch-surfing prior to this. One woman (aged 76) had moved to the inner city to share a house with her daughter and grand-daughter. She placed her name on

three housing lists knowing that her daughter planned to move overseas as soon as the grand- daughter finished high school. After waiting with mounting anxiety, three years later and just three months before the daughter departed, the Department of Housing offered her a small apartment.

A woman aged sixty-five, who was living in her motor home and dependent on public toilets for personal hygiene, reluctantly filled in the paper work to enable her to move into public housing. She did so to appease her sons who were concerned about her current life style. She was deemed an urgent case by the Department of Housing and was given a unit in an over 60s village within a few months of applying.

People like me, with limited superannuation, had nothing. I did have a roof over my head, but I didn't have a toilet or a shower. The day they gave me the key I cried because I just felt so grateful and blessed. I just can’t believe how fortunate I have been. P12 aged 66

Three of the women who moved into a new high rise social housing complex in the previous year spoke of difficulties adjusting to this new situation, of living in a mixed gender housing complex with people of all ages, social status, and states of mental health, and of not feeling safe in this environment.

I never expected to live in a place like this. I don’t want to be a witness to people’s big troubles because it upsets me too much. P8 aged 58

Two women had become homeless in the past two years, and two were transferred to social housing after losing their rented accommodation during a stay in hospital.

Over the weeks I was in hospital my pay from work finished, so I had no money. My family pulled my clothes and everything out of my unit. P6 aged 53

For a woman who had a motor cycle accident and then contracted dengue fever while working overseas, it was a shock when a relative picked her up from the airport, drove her to a large hospital and had her admitted to the psychiatric ward. Four days later a place was found for her at a women’s hostel.

The only space they had was sharing a room with a 23-year-old drug addict. This was very hard for a conservative older woman who had never done anything to hurt anyone, never taken drugs. P 4 aged 62