Quotes from participants
“…big families they come to Australia…they have seven kids, eight, and then they’re just. Have like 4 bedroom house. Yeah, and then maybe 1 bathroom…Yeah, you can imagine everyone getting up in the morning early evening waiting to go in the shower…they won’t show up on time at school or work, so that’s a big problem.”
“They apply for the different houses and there is no response…we raised with them and the explanation was we don’t have a lot of time to do the negotiation [or] try to understand the problem of the refugees and asylum seeker or skilled migrants. This is our business and we have so many other applications that have a better position.”
“You don’t know English, they’ll just give you the phone. It’s complicated. How are you going to know?”
“You know when you’re moving houses, clean houses, everything is good But most of the time when they get old houses, of course it’s ticked that everything it’s good when you start cleaning windows will fail, old pipes, things damaged and then what happens? They will just deduct [the] amount on your bond.”
“The kitchen is in the living room-sitting room…back home we have kitchen separate [you] don’t want to cook food when they’re there, looking…[you] don’t feel comfortable.”
“Housing pressure can result in relationship issues (especially for the women) which can lead to mental health problems and domestic violence”
…”rent increasing the food increasing. We have only one option to pay the rent or buy the food and we need to choose. And if we don’t buy the food, we stay hungry. If we don’t pay the rent, we’ll be out of the house.
Papering over the cracks