‘Sometimes life makes choices for you’: Lynette Diallo shares her homelessness story
A Murray Bridge retiree has shared her story with hopes that the warning she can offer – that anything can happen to anyone – will help others.
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Not so long ago, Lynette Diallo was flying high, as a former real estate agent and small business owner with a list of accomplishments to her name.
But life had other plans for her.
A fire destroyed the rental property where she was living, in Adelaide, and an insurance payout took the better part of a year to come through.
So, without any warning, and with all the pubs and hotels booked out long-term, she became homeless.
Living in her car and with her Rottweiler, Victory, her only companion, she travelled a bit at first: around South Australia, up to the Riverland, and back to her hometown of Portland, Victoria.
“I slept on the beach, on benches, on tables,” she said.
“I used to hate to hear those magic words, ‘Are you alright, love?’
“I said, ‘I’m waiting for wave number seven’.”
Adjusting to her new life was difficult, she suggested – many of the rough sleepers she got to know were dealing with mental health issues, and some resorted to theft to get by.
She suffered break-ins and had stones thrown at her car.
Some of the homelessness services out there were “as useless as tits on a bull”, she said, though others – like DVINA in Murray Bridge – were more helpful.
Then there was the way people looked at her.
“In Portland I was told, ‘Go back where you came from,” she said.
“There’s four generations of my family buried in the local cemetery.”
Over time, her weight dropped down as low as 38 kilograms, she said, and she didn’t have the strength to do anything.
She gave Victory up to a family who could offer a better life.
Pit stop at Wellington East
Eventually, using her insurance payout, she was able to buy a block of land at Wellington East.
She lived there in a caravan for a while, and started collecting antiques and other odds and ends with the idea of creating an art studio.
But a dispute with the Coorong council about development approval – and the threat of a $120,000 fine if she did not comply – soon forced her to move out again.
“I drove around the area (and) what I observed was caravans and shacks and this and that, so I presumed that’s what I could do – I could stay for a while until I got myself together,” she said at a council meeting last month.
“That wasn’t the case.
“I made a mistake, it was my fault – I should have done more research.
“I was only supposed to visit the land occasionally, I wasn’t supposed to live there.”
She suggested that the council provide welcome packs to the purchasers of new properties in the district, with information about the approvals required for certain activities.
The council could also, separately, provide info about the help available for residents who had recently become homeless.
Councils everywhere had to strike a balance between easing the current housing shortage and upholding development laws, community and corporate director Myles Somers said at the meeting.
“We’re in a housing crisis, there’s no doubt,” he said.
“Every council at the moment is … dealing with homelessness but also, at the same time, dealing with the law, the building code and the planning regulations.
“There is still some greyness in the rules around temporary accommodation on blocks, and it will be different from zone to zone.”
The state government was in the process of developing a pamphlet around the legality of temporary accommodation such as caravans, sheds and portable homes, he said.
However, he and the councillors agreed that a general welcome-to-the-district pack was a good idea.
What now for Lynette?
In the meantime, having sold her property again, Ms Diallo has shacked up with a friend in Murray Bridge, someone she met through Foodbank.
She still finds it hard to sleep, gets up at five every morning, and can’t permit herself little luxuries like having a bath.
But she has a chance to paint, to create art, and she’s writing down her life story.
She hoped that sharing it with others – in book form, in this story, maybe even as a podcast one day – might be of some use.
“You could be just days away from falling off the edge, and you don’t know it,” she said.
“The average person is six months away from bankruptcy.
“It happens so easily, and it’s awful: you’re sitting in a car and it’s two degrees, eating becomes overrated … I didn’t eat for five days, I couldn’t cook because I couldn’t store things, and when you’re on the move a lot, Centrelink money doesn’t go very far.”
There was only so much anyone could do to protect themselves against the unexpected, she suggested.
But at the very least, it paid to be mindful, and to consider the circumstances that might have put the people around us in their current situations.
“People say you make bad choices, but sometimes life makes choices for you.”
- Get help: Contact the Homelessness Gateway on 1800 003 308; or contact AC Care by visiting 29 Bridge Street, Murray Bridge, calling 1300 AC CARE, emailing care@accare.org.au or going to www.accare.org.au.
