What do these women have in common?

Housing crisis

- SAMANTHA TRENOWETH

Michelle, 55

... they have all lived through homelessness

Every night in Australia, more than 49,000 women are homeless. Some are in their teens. Others in their 70s. All their stories are unique. At The Weekly we believe every woman deserves safe, secure housing. We hope that you will join our Unhoused campaign and urge our governments to provide it.

Michelle Culnane had been a stay-at-home mum for M much of her married life. She had no savings to speak of when she and her husband went their separate ways, but she picked herself up, found somewhere for herself and her then-teenage daughter to live and made a comfortable home for them until her daughter went away to study.

"I was in my 40s then," Michelle tells The Weekly. "I still had a lot of life ahead, so I did a bit of dating and met a person on a dating site who I discovered, much too late, was controlling. We dated for a while, then moved in together. As our relationship progressed, I lost contact with everyone I knew. He said if I left, I'd leave with nothing. And I did.

"For two weeks, I slept in my car. It was horrible, it was frightening, it made me feel shameful. I'd bathe at the beach where there were showers. I remember sleeping at a truck stop one night. Two trucks came thundering in and all of a sudden, I was filled with terror. I thought, they could easily smash a window and get into my car and assault me. They didn't, but I spent that night on full alert, terrified. That's how homeless women on the street feel every night."

There followed months of couch surfing. "It was pretty soul-destroying," she admits. "One of the toughest things was realizing that some of your friends are only your friends when things are going well."