Housing stress, poverty and deprivation affect thousands of families: Salvos

Then life threw her a curve ball in the form of a failed relationship and an unsuccessful move from Canberra to Western Australia.

Last year she became one of thousands of people identified in a Salvation Army study released on Wednesday that has found 17 per cent of the organisation's 136,000 clients in 2015 didn't have a home of their own.

Ms Freeman and her girls, one 15 and one six, were among the 86 per cent of Salvation Army clients classified as severely deprived and unable to afford basic needs such as healthcare, food, medicines, clothing and entertainment.

While her life has been turned around thanks to Canberra's Salvos, of whom she cannot speak too highly, the fifth annual National Economic and Social Impact Survey paints a bleak picture of the lives of thousands of Australians, almost 10 per cent of whom are battling to pay mortgages, pushed into poverty by domestic violence, economic restructuring, poor health and sheer bad luck.

Almost 65 per cent of the Salvation Army's 2015 emergency assistance clients were female. Almost 40 per cent were single parents with two or more children and 85 per cent were on a government income support. Almost one in five were homeless or in temporary accommodation and 40 per cent had moved three times in 12 months.

Ms Freeman said at the time the survey was conducted she ticked all those boxes.

Reliant on the single parents' payment and child support from her ex-partner, she was couch surfing with friends and family members around Canberra and had given up hope on ever getting a "forever home" after being priced out of the private rental market and knocked back by ACT Housing.

"I drew the line at sleeping in the car. I wouldn't put my two girls [now 15 and six] through that," she told Fairfax.

"This wasn't [ever] going to happen to me. I honestly thought the father of my two youngest and I would be growing old together. I moved to Western Australia with him. I thought it was going to be the right thing for me and my smaller family.

"Then one day everything changed, without warning. I thought everything was fine and normal. I was in a relationship and financially secure and [then] he just ended it.

"The girls and I were homeless and without money and completely lost and, of course, we were 4500km away from our closest relatives. Suddenly you're forced to turn to places you either didn't know existed or had thought you'd never need."

On returning to the ACT Ms Freeman could not access the help from government agencies she had hoped for.

"It just wasn't what I expected at all. I had thought it was going to be easy to get help and set ourselves up and it wasn't. I was running around like a chook with its head cut off. We had family [here] but we were still homeless and struggling financially and we just didn't fit into the system."

It wasn't until she reached out to the Salvation Army that Ms Freeman was hooked up with a caseworker who helped her negotiate the bureaucratic maze. She is moving into her new home, a three bedroom ACT Housing property, this week.

"The girls are over the moon," she said. "A bedroom each of their own to grow in at last".

The NESIS report, which found 43 per cent of Salvation Army clients had gone without meals and that 30 per cent had turned to pawnshops, payday lenders, sex work, begging and crime to get money, has called for a national plan to tackle persistent poverty, generational poverty and inequality.

It has identified domestic violence as a major cause of poverty and wants emergency accommodation and financial assistance for victims to receive more funding.

The Red Shield Appeal is on this weekend.