My family needs a stable home, can you help me build our deposit so that I can access home ownership?

I am a single mum of three children. My oldest child is 16 and has moved home 20 times in their life. Can you imagine moving 20 times? That’s an average of every 9 months! My youngest is 10 and is suffering anxiety and is in tears almost every day, anticipating our lease ending after Christmas.

Our rental experience has been fraught, marked by a series of short-term tenancies, each with unclear end dates, meaning that I frequently sit on the edge of not knowing when we will have to find the next place, or how long it will last.

Each move is distressing, as rent dramatically increases with each move, pricing me out of an already scarce housing market, that privileges dual-income households.

Every year I feel like I am asking my children to cull their belongings- last year, we relinquished our piano- my family inheritance, which was played for hours every day. It was the equivalent of having a pet for us (which we don’t have because it is too hard when you rent).

Why? Because the only rental we could find at the eleventh hour was a short- term house sitting vacancy, and there was nowhere to put our piano. When we move from here in the next couple of months, I am likely to give up our trampoline, which is also regularly loved, as I am so tired of moving such big things around so regularly. I broke my wrist hauling the trampoline to this temporary home, just four months ago, and don’t want to risk it again.

I acknowledge my privilege in having been a custodia of a piano and trampoline -and -it is a tough gig to keep asking your children to part with things that children with stable homes are rarely needing to face.

I long to be a parent who does not have to constantly recreate a sense of home in someone else’s asset and continuity and find the “silver lining” in it all. Is something I dream of and often go to bed crying for.

The longing is so strong that I am in the position of needing to appeal to people I do not know to help me.

Moving as constantly as we have had to means months of anxiety, appointments, missing work to attend 10 minute long open for inspections, scheduled at impossible times, knowing you are not likely to get it anyway when you are competing again dual income households.

Panic attacks feature regularly in my life.

I have been working solidly since my marital separation 7 years ago. I am blessed to have a good relationship with the father of my children and we support each other to work and be with the children. I have gone from being a full time stay at home mum, to completing a Master’s degree, and working my way into a full time equivalent position of a post-graudate Course Coordinator, at a private university (all whilst managing/masking the complexities of our housing insecurity).

I have managed to save $85,000 and keep us eating, living and learning well. I have done everything within my power to position us to be able to access homeownership.

In the meantime, house prices have doubled, and interest rates have just begun their climb. This means that no matter what I do, how well I have prepared, as a single parent, I am unable to access the stability of home ownership that we are so desperately craving.

I firmly believe it is not because there is a problem with my ability or willingness to work long and hard and service a loan. It is simply because we are living in a structure that a rewards the efforts of a particular demographic.

We are told capitalism is based on a meritocracy- if you put in you will be rewarded accordingly. This is systemically untrue. In my case, for all my labour, which is substantial, and based on a post-graduate level education- I will never be in a position to purchase a home in the community that we have lived in and contributed to for15 years.

Beyond that, the compounding factors of being unable to sustain a stable nuclear family, not having a stable nuclear family as my heritage and being neurodivergent – I am bipolar, the odds are structurally stacked against me. I cannot speak for but will also acknowledge the struggle that is amplified by discrimination based on race, religion, sexual orientation, gender and differing abilities in this system.

Struggle perpetuates struggle, privilege perpetuates privilege. For some of us, circumstances, identities and structures, render one’s merit never enough.

What I am trying to say is, for those of us caught in the precarious world of renting, who do not wish to be, this is not about us as individuals, this is about the structure of capitalism, those it rewards and those whose efforts are undermined by it.

Not everyone wants to own, I know I never used to, but I have been unable to provide us with a stable ground to rest in and grow from. And so I need to buy us a home.

Wonderful web of people! I need help to get out of this loop, as there is nothing else I can do to support us. The lack here is not my own, it is structural.

They say it takes a village to raise a child, I need the village to raise a hut with me!

I am short $150,000 to supplement my deposit and the loan that I can get from the bank, so that I can purchase a modest abode in our community.

I need to get this together early December, and hopefully find something to buy, to prevent having to find another rental over the holiday period.

Please could you consider donating to us? Perhaps while I lost access to housing due to inflation, your equity doubled? Imagine if these market driven gains and losses, that had nothing to do with our willingness or ability to work were redistributed so that we could all go home to a place to call our own at the end of the day?

I cannot wait for structural change, it may never come, but I do hold hope and believe in the spirit and generosity of people. I do believe in miracles and the power of empathy.

We all understand what it is to struggle and long for security and some of you may be lucky enough to experience this being met in some ways, possibly through having a home that is your own or you are buying.

Thank you in advance for your support, I will never be able to pay you back, but I will always be grateful and will continue to contribute as generously as I am able into the world.

With gratitude and in solidarity,

Jacqui