Older Queensland women share hardship experiences | The Senior | August 17, 2023 - video Dailymotion

Older Queensland women tell their hardship experiences to support group Sharing with Friends.  Footage from Sharing with Friends

Transcript

00:00 I knew that I wasn't the only person in this situation. I understood that there were many

00:10 structural issues across my lifetime that led me to be in a place along with over 400,000

00:17 women in Australia who find themselves in a similar situation at the moment.

00:22 What am I going to do? Do I just have to keep working and working and working until I drop

00:26 or is it possible for me to get something? There's nothing. Nobody will loan money to

00:32 you at my age and yet you still have to pay those enormous rents just to get by week after

00:40 week. I rent a granny flat attached to a main house.

00:45 Yeah, looking for alternative solutions and rent affordability is out of the realms of

00:52 possibility and I don't have enough funds to buy a house outright. Ideally I'd love

00:58 a safe, affordable, secure place to call my own and that's what I'm seeking.

01:03 So it occurred to me in these last few years when I had a second experience of virtually

01:09 nearly being homeless myself where I lost my job and a house I'd rented for 25 years

01:15 all in the same week. So that left me in a situation where I didn't have a job, I'd

01:21 paid 30 applications for private housing options and I couldn't get any house. I had two dogs

01:30 and I couldn't find anywhere to live. Until recently I was living in a tower in

01:34 a high-rise. There were 100 people there but you hardly ever saw your neighbours unless

01:42 you happened to meet at the lift or in the car park. You were living in a fairly isolated

01:48 situation actually. In all the places I've been it's just been

01:54 individuals living in their own little world and I felt that this was something that would

02:05 give me a bit of community as I don't have any family of my own and no one would really

02:15 notice if I wasn't around. That's why I am wanting to get a house that

02:24 I can call my own now while I am still working because once I stop working I will probably

02:33 be going on pension mostly. I have superannuation but it's not a lot of superannuation. So I

02:43 really want to get myself set up, particularly being an older woman, I'm 62, I want to be

02:50 set up and have something that I can go 'ah, this is a roof over my head'.

02:57 Having a house, a secure place to live where you can keep being a contributor to community

03:02 life, you can still be connected socially, you're not alone, I think is a wonderful concept

03:09 and really part of my commitment to community which I've been working to build all my professional

03:16 life.

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