<
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/aug/04/last-resort-when-the-only-option-left-amid-australias-housing-crisis-is-a-motel-ntwnfb>
"Blanche is a lot of things: a mother of eight and a grandmother of 10. A viral
TikToker. A survivor of family and domestic violence. A former drug user, clean
for nearly two years. And she is, for the moment, housed.
To the 49-year-old, the two-bedroom community housing she has in Melbourne’s
west feels palatial. She previously spent seven months living in a hotel room
with her youngest son, then aged nine. Before that, they were wrapped in
blankets on the street. They spent four years bouncing around.
“I thought having a drug addiction was hard but being homeless is harder,” she
says.
Driven by a cost-of-living crisis, exacerbated by growing family violence and
priced out of the private rental market, more parents and their children are
experiencing homelessness.
New data from Launch Housing shows that a lack of stable long-term housing
means more families are being housed in emergency accommodation such as hotels,
with average stays stretching out to 12 weeks.
Last year the organisation supported 230 families in hotel rooms, with stays
funded by the Victorian government. It’s unclear how many crisis-supported
accommodation rooms for families there are in the state – but Launch runs 11.
In the hotel, Blanche and her son lived in one room, sleeping in two beds.
“I wasn’t allowed to have any visitors or anything,” she says. “Only one power
point worked at a time, and I got bloody frostbite sores on my toes. We only
had one little heater.
“We didn’t have cooking facilities. I bought an air-fryer … Once a week my son
and I went to [fast food restaurant] Lord of the Fries and got nuggets for him.
“Like any other homeless person, sometimes we choose between eating and our
children.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
