Coming Home

Before experiencing homelessness, Neen, Mary and Kiara were three ordinary girls growing up in Victoria. In this episode, we’ll meet their families, their cultures, hear their passion and pride, and follow their joys and sorrows as they navigate childhood. We’ll also look at some big concepts – the history of housing and housing policy, and the laws, culture and gender roles that disproportionately affect women. We’ll explore what makes women’s experiences of homelessness different to men’s and take a deep dive into Australia’s housing crisis, and how we created this crisis in the first place.

Kiara, Neen and Mary move into adulthood and learn to navigate the world around them. They study, get work, leave home, marry and make the choices of youth, surviving as young women in a world that places less value on what they do and who they are. And while they come of age, Australia’s housing system begins to unravel – events and policies begin to conspire, and some of the pieces that will create a housing crisis slip quietly into place.

Neen worries about her partner’s reaction when they separate, and as Kiara’s marriage ends, her feelings of shame and failure begin. Both women feel the effects of a lack of affordable housing and a lifetime of women’s economic disadvantage. In the meantime, Mary falls in love with the erratic and abusive Jimmy, and gives birth to her first child. We look at housing as a human right, Australia’s tenancy laws, housing affordability stress and the strategies used to trap women in abusive relationships.

Mary shares her challenges as a single Mum in a private rental during Covid-19. We also go back to follow her story as she grapples with her relationship with Jimmy, the father of her first child. Kiara’s world descends into a living nightmare, and Neen faces an uncaring, impersonal and overly bureaucratic welfare system. We learn how our social security system is failing single parents, the impact of coercive control and how family violence often looks different from how we imagine it.

Neen teeters on the knife-edge of homelessness, living in a caravan and not getting anywhere in the housing system. Mary, pregnant with a two-year-old, bounces between accommodation trying to protect herself and her child whilst surviving on dismal government subsidies. Kiara goes further into housing debt as she looks after her four children, while hoping her husband will change.

We explore the history of our social housing system and the mess that is the housing support system today. We deepen our understanding of why women’s homelessness looks different, the damage it creates, and the stigmas and prejudice attached to homelessness, especially for women and children.

Kiara is forced to move house time and time again to deal with her ex-husband’s abuse, Mary can’t believe the support ‘King Jimmy’ receives when he gets out of jail, and Neen is rewarded for her persistence with a remote and detached system and finally finds a forever home.

We learn about the Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence and the counterproductive way that the Australian government funds a range of social services before funding housing. We also explore some of the ways we can take action for change.

In this bonus episode, Neen, Kiara and Mary meet each other for the first time. Along with Pai from Juno and Kate the audio producer, the women gather on Zoom to debrief about their experiences of being in and creating Coming Home.