Why a Bell Park mum feels like she’s working a ‘dozen jobs a day’

A Bell Park single mother caring for three children with disabilities and facing potential homelessness has spoken out the pressures of housing stress.

A Bell Park mother has said she feels like she’s working “a dozen jobs a day” amid caring responsibilities for her children and dealing with housing stresses.

The mother, who has four children at home, three living with disabilities, said the maintenance of her home is too costly, meaning she is facing selling and ending up homeless.

“I can handle the mortgage, but I can’t keep up with the necessary maintenance and upgrades,” she said.

“I’m facing ‘do I, sooner rather than later, have to sell’ and if I wait any longer I’m looking at not getting the price I need.

“It’s a ‘damned if I do and damned if I don’t’ situation.”

The mother, who declined to be named, said several maintenance tasks needed to be done in her home to make it liveable.

“I desperately need new flooring throughout the house,” she said.

“There’s a toilet that’s not working.

“I need new blinds on pretty much all the windows.”

After learning of the mother’s situation, support co-ordinator Charlotte Brierley started a GoFundMe page to raise funds to pay for the works.

Ms Brierley said due to rental availability and prices, as well as a “five year wait” for public housing, she was unable to help the mother find alternative accommodation.

She launched the GoFundMe campaign to assist with the mother’s housing repairs.

Ms Brierley said many parents are faced with difficult housing arrangements, putting them under “enormous stress”, and some were confronted with the possibility of giving up their children.

“[Housing stresses] cause a huge breakdown in mental health which then affects their [parents] general health and wellbeing, and their energy to keep being parents,” Ms Brierley said.

“Some parents are on the brink of relinquishment.

“Not being able to provide for their children, makes them feel like they have failed as a parent.

“This is why relinquishment seems like the only option sometimes.”

Ms Brierley said it was “absolutely vital and a human right” for parents to be able to access basic living arrangements.

Council to Homeless Persons chief executive officer Jenny Smith said more than 1 in 4 clients presenting to Victorian homelessness services were families with children, with 22,970 children under 18 presenting in 2020-21.

Ms Smith said low income families struggle to pay the rent which has increased across the state, and that it was “an issue about government priorities”.

“While the Victorian government has made big commitments to build more affordable rentals in regional Victoria the federal government has been missing in action,” she said.

“With an election imminent, the most powerful thing anyone can do is to raise this issue with their local member of federal Parliament.”

To donate towards the mother’s housing repairs, gofund.me/327cdb91

Originally published as Why a Bell Park mum feels like she’s working a ‘dozen jobs a day’