I’VE been lucky all my life (I was born a straight white male in Australia after all), and I was lucky in my two months living without a home. I’ve got a good income and lots of family and friends who live locally.

Matters were hugely complicated by owning two dogs. But having found myself at the start of December in a surprisingly vicious and competitive rental market (“You’re approved for the property! You just need to dispose of your dogs!”, or “You can have the place, you just need to sign up to 31 points of house rules”), I’d like to share some sense of the hardships.

For a start everything you own is either in the hands of your ex-partner, in storage or somewhere in your car.

I did take my toothbrush, but new deodorant and a towel was needed before I could achieve basics such as going to work. Everything in your house you’ve taken for granted needs to be bought again and that can be expensive.

Friends are understanding but you’re still invading their personal space for an unspecified length of time.

This makes for fraught social balancing. Spend too much time out and you’re treating their house like a hotel. Spend too much time in and you’re intruding on their domestic life.

Dogs have no understanding of these subtleties, they’re just deeply upset by the turmoil in their living arrangements. Allowed on the couch at one house, not at another. Can’t join the neighbourhood dogs in barking? No poor, simple dog can be expected to understand the complexities.

When you’re at the house it’s one thing, but the issue of being homeless while trying to hold on to a job is that for eight hours a day the dogs need to be somewhere you’re not, and behaving themselves and not burning any bridges with the only place you’ve got to stay the night.

Once you’re completely on the streets that’s pretty much game over for either the job or the dogs.

I’ve had it easier than others though. A young mother I know who fled her abusive partner can stay with her grandmother on nights she has custody of the child, sleeps on friends’ couches the other nights, and works in a brothel to pay the bills. She also has now found somewhere permanent to stay.

My point is that the peson leaving a relationship can find themselves on a tightrope with no net; fall and you’re living out of a shopping trolley begging for change, hoping it doesn’t rain and praying to God you can find somewhere quiet where no one will attack you.

Even the most hard hearted who view all this suffering and dread as just the product of bad life choices might want to consider the costs; those who fall end up ricocheting through the courts, prison and the emergency department. All extremely expensive resources for the taxpayer.

I’d like to propose a surplus stock be kept of emergency housing. Nothing too flash or comfortable, converted shipping containers would do, that anyone can turn up and be allocated, good for three months, with children and pets welcome.

It would provide a real and safe chance for people to sort out their lives, and it would save a lot of time and money for government.

It would be a huge improvement over the current fractured arrangements of shelters run by groups with social agendas.

One fears the only reason it doesn’t exist is that anyone with the power to fix it doesn’t have the personal need.