Mum reveals how she became homeless after losing everything in a house fire in 2021

A university-educated single mum who has been homeless twice in just 18 months and is now living in a caravan fears that she will be on the streets again before Christmas.  

Lauren De Groot, 27, lost her first home to fire when rats chewed through wiring in January 2021, and her second when floods swept through Lismore in northern NSW in February, 2022.

She now fears she and her three-year-old daughter, Freya, will be homeless again in October, unless she can work out a way to secure affordable, long-term housing.

Speaking with FEMAIL the disability support worker, who works as a sole-trader, explained that on paper her business doesn’t count as income.

‘When I…