Everybody needs a safe and secure place of refuge – and for the vast majority of us, that safe place should be home. As American writer Maya Angelou said: “The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

When I finally made the decision, amid difficult personal circumstances, to flee my home with my children for our safety and enter a women’s refuge in mid-March 2025, I told my landlord about the situation. I informed the property management company that I would be staying in the refuge – but only on a temporary basis. All of our belongings remained in our home, and our plan was that we would return immediately it was safe for us to do so.

Within a couple of weeks, in early April 2025, I was able to inform the management company that the children and I had returned home. Finally, or so I hoped, we would have a time to rest and heal, after all the distress and trauma of the past weeks.

Except that’s not what happened.

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I had lived in that home with my family since 2018. Like so many people trying to survive in today’s housing and cost-of-living crises, I received a regular housing assistance payment (Hap). But while I was in the refuge, the........

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