Financial hardship can affect so much more than a person’s ability to pay for food or housing. It can also leave people feeling ashamed, isolated and deeply alone.
Australians experiencing financial hardship are more than six times as likely to experience persistent loneliness. When there is no money for transport, a coffee with a friend or a meal shared around the table, people can begin to withdraw. Financial stress can become social isolation - and the feeling that no one cares.
That’s why HopeStreet offers more than meals or shelter. Through welcoming cafés, low-cost grocery stores, safe spaces, housing support and caring relationships, people receive practical help alongside something just as important: friendship, dignity and a place to belong.
Lisa knows what that kind of welcome can mean. As a single mum of three, she was struggling to feed her children while keeping a roof over their heads. After her children were bullied at school, the disruption it caused made working full-time or regular hours impossible, and there simply wasn’t enough money for the basics.
HopeStreet’s low-cost grocery stores helped Lisa feed her family and still pay the rent. But the care she received mattered just as much as the groceries.
“It can be embarrassing if you’re struggling. You don’t want to have people look down on you and be judged. But they just don’t do that here. They’re happy, welcoming… They’re my second family.”
Today, Lisa volunteers across HopeStreet’s café, warehouse and store. She knows the names of the people who walk through the doors, notices those who are unsure or alone, and helps put a smile on their faces. The support she received has become care she now passes on to others. That is food with friendship.
Maya also understands the loneliness that can come with hardship. After leaving a violent, alcoholic husband, she was left without assets, without a home and carrying responsibility for his debts.
For a year, Maya had nowhere permanent to live. At one point she was placed in accommodation where drug-affected men would arrive yelling and banging on nearby doors during the night. The fear brought back memories of her ex-husband’s violent behaviour, and she felt she had to cope with it all alone.
Then Maya found HopeStreet’s Women’s Space, a safe place where she could share her experiences with other women who had survived domestic and family violence. HopeStreet case workers supported her to find safe, long-term housing and begin rebuilding her life.
Now Maya reaches out to women arriving at the same space that helped her. She also volunteers in the op shop, sorting clothes and offering kindness to the people she meets.
“I like to work as a volunteer because I love to help… I want to be very nice to people.”
Maya’s story is an example of housing with humanity: not only finding a safe home, but being treated as a person worthy of dignity, acceptance and love.
Lisa and Maya’s lives are very different, but both show what can happen when practical support is offered with genuine human connection. HopeStreet helped them move from hardship and isolation towards recovery and then towards helping others.
As Psalm 68:6 says, “God sets the lonely in families.” For many people, HopeStreet becomes that family. A community where they are known, welcomed and reminded they do not have to face hard times alone.
Your gift can provide food with friendship, housing with humanity and community with kindness. It can help meet urgent practical needs while creating the relationships that make recovery possible. Please donate today and help someone move from loneliness to belonging.
*For privacy and protection reasons, details in Lisa and May's story have been changed. Any changes are based on real-life visitors to HopeStreet locations and representative of the conversations we have with people in the HopeStreet community.
