The Boarders and Lodgers project can offer you social
support by visiting boarding houses and telling you about
groups and activities that might interest you. Assistance
with day to day tasks like filling out forms, dealing with
Centrelink and banking is available.
The project also assists in referring and linking you with a
range of other services such as Means on Wheels,
Community Nursing, Mental Health teams and Social and
Support Groups.
Room Vacant
A Social
History of Residents of Boarding Houses in
"WHY……a social history project.
I started working on the Newtown Neighbourhood Centre’s
Boarding House Project in 1999, with the project expanding over the next 4
years. The catalyst for expansion was the acquisition of ALI (Active Linking
Initiative) funds which enabled us to better meet the needs of residents of
Licensed Boarding Houses.
One of the major undertakings of the new ALI program was the Holiday program
which involved taking residents of Licensed Boarding House’s away on holidays
to Ettalong in 2001. The participants were a group of residents and workers from
the Boarding House Project. During this time, whilst sitting on the beach, I
found myself talking with an older resident who I knew a little. On this day,
however, I was really able to listen to her tell me her story...
"AS SHE TOLD ME… Her
school days…Her family, brothers, sisters. A boyfriend that never was to be
her husband. The Sydney she remembered from childhood. About how she was taken
off to ‘Hospital’ at 18. A Hospital that was to be her home for the next 27
years. About how hard she worked in the Hospital Laundry.
Her release finally came, but she found that the only option open to her was a
Licensed Boarding House. So the next 24 years of her life was to be spent under
the control of a Boarding House Manager.
One part of her story that was to stay with me was how she had very much wanted
children, a husband, a family. Love came her way, as she told me,…
"The first, a “boy her mother knew but he wouldn’t have me”. Then a man she met in Hospital “but they wouldn’t let us marry”. Then after many years a man came in to her life that again wanted to marry her “but the priest wouldn’t marry us because I was too old to have kids”. As if the loss of a chance at love, family, companionship, was not enough.
This last part of her story
and the injustice of it, hit home to me, when I so naively asked her why she was
taken to Hospital and what was wrong with her? She asked me that same question
back! A question she has been asking for 51 years. A question that was never
answered for her!
Residents of Boarding Houses having a special story to tell, a story that has
not had an outlet. With this in mind I started the search for the funding needed
to record the social history of residents of boarding houses."
Gavin
Cane
Boarding House Project 1999-2002