Big Thank You!
Women's Housing Ltd would like to thank Slim Form for donating many, many, many intimate apparel items for our tenants!
Everyone needs to feel special this time of year and thanks to Slim Form our tenants can.
Christmas is all Wrapped up!
With a flurry of paper, ribbon and sticky tape some very helpful elves from Country Women's Association, Richmond Branch and Richmond Medical wrapped presents for our tenants.
The presents will be given to tenants so they can provide for their families and themselves hopefully producing smiles for Christmas.
A heartfelt thank you to all the elves!
Bayswater Development
Construction begins...
Do they know it’s Christmas time again…
With Christmas parties at our properties kicking off and staff eating Christmas chocolates while they work Women’s Housing Ltd would like to wish everyone a safe and merry Christmas
Happy Birthday Women’s Housing Ltd
On 26 November 2018, Women's Housing Ltd celebrated their 21st birthday! Staff, board and supporters were invited to raise a glass and enjoy some cake and look back on 21 years.
The evening was hosted by Peggy O'Neal, WHL board member and Kate Jenkins, Sex Discrimination Commissioner, was in the hot seat for some Q&A.
Ascot Vale Opening
On 8 November 2018, Danny Pearson MP, State Member for Essendon, officially opened the new look Ascot Vale development.
Women’s Housing Ltd is excited to offer 16 new self contained studio apartments to women escaping family violence and women over 55. The tenanting process will start in December.
Berwick Art Program
Tenants at the Berwick rooming house were lucky enough to have Hannah, a first year student from Latrobe University, provide weekly art classes.
Hannah worked with the tenants using an open studio approach. Tenants started a discussion, experimented with materials and used art find their voice.
Fair Deal Housing and Wellbeing Expo
On 17 October 2018, staff from Women’s Housing Ltd attended the Fair Deal Housing and Wellbeing Expo in Rosebud. At the expo staff joined the campaign for more affordable housing, connected with the Mornington Peninsula community and built relationships with support services.
A series of unfortunate incidents and life takes a different turn
On September 8, 2017 my life changed. Again. That was the day I found my new home thanks to the Women’s Housing Ltd. Before this life-changing event I had been living in groundhog day. Every month wondering how in hell I was going to pay my rent/gas/electricity/phone and then blunder my way through to the next round of bills and heart palpitations. It had become apparent that I was highly unlikely to be employed by anyone because, well I still haven’t discerned the answer to why an eminently employable, presentable, knowledgeable and experienced woman with exceptional written and interpersonal skills couldn’t even get a response to an application for a job as a retail assistant. This despite an extensive and successful career in advertising and marketing, as a creative director and later as a freelancer with my own business. This was a career I loved, not only because it meant I had the ability to stand or fall by my own work without having to tread the landmine territory of office politics, but maybe equally because I could be sitting at my computer at 7am in my pjs and be ‘at work’. Well there was ‘a series of unfortunate events’ that ultimately put paid to this career. In the twelve months between 2000 and 2001 my life changed (not for the first or last time as we all know) when I lost my mother, my brother and my lover. I had been caring for my mother from the time she was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer at the age of 66, until her death just after her 67th birthday, but still managing to work between her treatments and specialist appointments. That snowball got rolling then and just grew over the ensuing months and I have never been the same since those losses. Suddenly I became something of a hoarder and the major depression I had lived with my whole life now completely defined me. Sometimes I was incapable of forming words let alone walking from the bedroom to the kitchen. Anyway, many, many doctors’ appointments and innumerable prescriptions later I was finally able to function again. As I had lost all of my clients and contacts associated with my freelance business I had to start again and the only door open to me was retail assistant. Long story short, I loved it and began to rediscover myself. Then my elderly father who lived in Brisbane and suffered with myelo fibrosis, reached the stage where he really needed someone to accompany him to his regular transfusions, make sure he was eating properly and generally keep an eye on him. Moving to Brisbane meant my life changed I lost my sense of self again. I cared for him for 3 years and when he died I could at last come home to Melbourne. I was eventually able to find work back in retail until around two years ago when the business owner had a major stroke and the business closed. Since then I have become that cliché, an invisible woman of a certain age. My inability to find work trapped me in a cycle of poverty where I couldn’t afford to pay the rent where I was living but I also couldn’t afford to move. Then on 8 September, 2017 I was approved for an apartment by Women’s Housing Ltd and my life changed. I can pay my rent and my bills. I can buy decent food and even a bottle of wine if I feel like it. You know they say, “you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone” and wow that’s so true. I had no idea how much stress I was living with until I was finally able to look back at it from the outside. Now, again thanks to Women’s Housing Ltd, I’m doing a course to enable me to start my own micro business, in the process I’m reacquainting myself with some of my strengths and abilities. I’m so grateful that my life continues to change and I’m excited to discover who I will be next.