Why working chef is forced to live in her car: ‘I didn’t expect this’

A mother has been forced to live in her car for the last 18 months as she can’t afford to pay rent despite working as a chef.

Jaki Rose, 58, works as a chef at a brewery in Brisbane yet spends her time after hours driving between car parks in the city’s north to find a place to park her station wagon overnight. Not that long ago she was a married stay-at-home mother and she never expected her life to change so drastically after her relationship broke down.

“Did I expect to be homeless? No… I didn’t expect this, not at all,” she told ABC News. “I couldn’t afford the rent.”

She relies on charities to help her with hot meals, as well as shower and laundry facilities, but has found these services are “geared toward unemployed people” so there are often days where she can’t access what she needs.

Working mother not eligible for social housing

Rose works 25 hours a week and earns more than $609 — meaning she is not eligible for social housing as it is the state government’s maximum earning threshold.

“If the means testing stayed with CPI (inflation) and pay increases I would’ve been bound to have qualified,” she said.

Government backflips on plan to offer Olympic village as housing

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics there are 20,000 people in Queensland experiencing homelessness, which means one in every 200 Queenslanders is facing this issue.

A key factor in the plan to help minimize this in the state was to offer the Brisbane 2032 Olympic Village as housing ahead of the Games, however, the state government has since backflipped on this decision.

“We are currently not planning to use the constructed dwellings for temporary accommodation, to then transfer into Games mode, to then transfer into permanent mode,” Economic Development Queensland general manager Debbie McNamara said on Wednesday.

There are now plans to instead bring forward alternate land for social and affordable housing, with the details still unclear. There was no confirmation whether the Olympic Village would lie vacant ahead of the Games.

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