ANYONE CAN BE HOMELESS

AFTER LEAVING AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP, RACHAEL NATOLI AND HER SONS BECAME HOMELESS. NOW SHE HELPS OTHER WOMEN LEAVE, TOO

- Melissa Field

On the outside, Rachael Natoli's life looked picture perfect. She 0 lived comfortably in Sydney's affluent eastern suburbs with her partner and she was a proud mum to twin sons. "But just because externally everything looked OK, the truth was my life was far from perfect," Natoli, 40, tells WHO. "My ex was emotionally, physically, sexually, and financially abusive," she says.

After an eight-year relationship, former primary school teacher-turned-nanny Natoli, who had moved from the UK to Australia to be with her ex, found the courage to leave with her then-2-year-old sons. It was then that she found herself unexpectedly experiencing homelessness. "Being homeless doesn't always mean sleeping on the street," she explains. "Homelessness and housing insecurity is a huge problem for many women, especially when leaving domestic and family abuse situations. It can actually happen to anyone."

For Natoli, that meant that when she left her ex-partner, she and her toddler sons first moved into a one-bedroom apartment for a few weeks loaned to her by a friend of a friend. "I thought that I'd be able to find a rental property quickly, but it wasn't easy," she explains, adding that when she had to vacate that apartment for the new owners, she was then housed in a Sydney motel room supplied by Housing NSW.

"I was extremely grateful to have that roof over my head, but living in one room with toddlers wasn't a viable long-term solution," she explains. "I couldn't cook for my boys with just a toaster and microwave in the room."