End to pensioner's struggle  

In mid-2010, Traralgon pensioner Alan Clay, 63, began looking for a new place to live. After four years in a Carrum Downs unit, continual rent increases meant he was struggling to pay the bills.  

"It had just got to the point where I couldn't afford it anymore," Alan says. "I just couldn't pay the rent."  

When his son told him about Haven's Affordable Housing properties in Traralgon, Alan successfully applied for a 1BR unit and moved into his current home in late 2010.  

"It's more of a country feel here, it's friendlier, the unit has a bigger garden than I had in the old place and it just suits me better," Alan says.  

As a pensioner battling rising cost-of-living pressures, the  rental subsidy has allowed Alan to introduce a little more flexibility into a tight budget.  

"I live from week to week and with power, water and everything else going up all the time, the little things add up. I don't know how I'd have got by or where I'd be if I hadn't found this unit."

 

Google search leads family to Haven 

A simple Google search led to a better life for Warrnambool couple Darryl and Coralie Hiscock and daughters, Ellie, 7, and Laura, 5.

In late 2009, the family were contemplating a move from their 3BR housing co-operative home due to Ellie's bad asthma.

"The house was old, the windows and doors didn't seal properly and it was always cold," Coralie says. "It wasn’t a great place for a child with asthma." Unsure where to start the couple turned to the Internet and Googled two words: affordable housing. This led them to the Loddon Mallee Housing Services website (now Haven) and the Affordable Housing program.

Coralie made some online inquiries, printed off the application forms and applied. Within weeks, Haven contacted the family about a 3BR home which had just become vacant.   Two years later, the family regard it as 'home'.

 

 

"It's a great location, the people are lovely and it's really family-oriented," Coralie says. "We're in a quiet court so the kids can ride their bikes in the street without me worrying, and the house is centrally heated so that no matter where Ellie is, she’s warm."

The Hiscocks say the rent subsidy has allowed them to enjoy some simple luxuries while saving for their own home. 

"For an equivalent home on the private rental market, we would be paying another $50-$60 a week," Coralie says. "I only work part-time so the subsidy makes a big difference starting from the food you buy to the little extras you can afford for the family.”

Security is a blessing  

In 1988, after more than 20 wonderful years in their Yallourn North home, Ken and Margaret Cook faced an uncertain future.  

With Morwell's power stations being privatised, job prospects were grim for crane driver Ken. The couple rented out their home and moved to NSW in search of secure employment. Then Ken injured his back.

"Financially, we struggled," Margaret, 70, says. "Ken wasn't earning and we were both on the pension so we sold our house in Yallourn."

For the next 17 years, the couple rented a series of homes in Ballina and Banora Point, NSW.  

In 2005, after a trip to see family, Ken and Margaret moved back to the Morwell area where rent was cheaper. Initially they rented their son's home but family circumstances changed and the house was sold. 

"We seemed to be constantly looking for somewhere to live and at our age, it's expensive, stressful and it just gets beyond you," Margaret says.  “We just wanted somewhere permanent to call home.”  

That permanency came in the form of a Haven ad in the local paper seeking tenants for its affordable housing properties. The Cooks applied for a 2BR unit expecting to be placed on a long waiting list but to their delight, were shown through and offered their preferred property. They have been in their unit since July 2010.

"I'm positively, absolutely over the moon to be finally settled," Margaret says.  

"We don't have to worry about the rent going up or the house being sold and going through the exhausting process of looking for somewhere else. To be secure for the first time in many years is pure heaven.”