Please help protect my family from homelessness

Kaya friends, those who I know, those who I'm yet to know and those who I may never meet but will still be friends to my family.

In May 2023, I found myself and my four kids victim to the current housing crisis, unable to keep up with concurrent rental increases and unable to find affordable housing for me and my four children, one of whom has a neurodevelopmental disability, which this insecurity is exerbating.

Despite our tenacious efforts to navigate our complex community and homelessness services system, I could not secure any accommodation.

Most recently, I paid $1,400 per week to stay in a mining-type donger in a caravan park. The irony doesn't evade me!

However, I have contacted every available service, submitted countless applications and am on almost as many waitlists. None of the contacted services can tell me how long I will need to wait before finding a home.

While this weekly accommodation cost is exponentially beyond my means as a single mother, the alternative and only available option is for me and my four children to live in my car.

While sleeping in a tent in a backyard might have been an option, finding a safe place to pitch a tent is hard, let's be honest, we are all doing it tough in this economic crisis.

I am requesting that as many of us as possible contribute to my GoFundMe, this will secure me three months' accommodation, and hopefully, one of the services will come through and offer me something soon. If this happens and I don't spend all the funds, I will pay these funds forward to another family in this situation.

I know we are all doing tough right now, but if you can even contribute a small amount and we hit the target, my family will have a real chance at building back our security and our stability.

If you cannot contribute, please share my story and GoFundMe page ask them to consider contributing and promoting to their networks.

When our systems let us down, all we have is each other.

Warmest gratitude,

Margaret and her four incredibly resilient children.