Australian Politics

This might surprise you, but there are plenty of people with jobs who live in public housing.

And you can discount the first 18 years or so, being that she wasn't an adult and was presumably with her parents. Which gives you a little clue about the socioeconomic class she was in.

Being a single mum in the '60s wasn't a walk in the park either. Plenty of gender inequality in wages/job conditions, plenty of "a woman's place is in the kitchen", and plenty of leaving high school in grade 8/9 after doing "home economics" (read: cooking and sewing). After that, with 18 years of looking after your kid, it's too late to go back to uni/tafe in the '80s when you're in your '40s, because you don't have the time outside of work to even think about meeting entry requirements. So you're stuck with the low-pay jobs in an economic climate that was busily inflating property values as much as possible.

So give Albo's mum a break. She managed to get her son enough of a leg up to get out of the trap she was in.

Maybe if you, IDK, read the article your question would have been answered...
"Albanese's mother, Maryanne, was a single mother and disability pensioner who lived with chronic rheumatoid arthritis for most of her adult life."

I had an aunty with rheumatoid arthritis and I knew it was incredibly debilitating but I didn't see her much and never really understood until I saw it hit my not so old wife. It is really fucking scary and a lot more than just joint pain. Fortunately she got to a specialist and on treatments that have it more or less under control but a lot of the treatments wouldn't have been around in the past and once joint damage is done it is permanent.

Public housing didn't used to be only for people on welfare, at least not over here in South Australia. It might have been different interstate. When the Liberal and Country League established it here 90 years ago it was affordable accommodation for working families to help industrialize the state. South Australia was always struggling economically against the biggest states and had to work harder and smarter to attract industry and workers. A worker might be ok with lower pay if rent was more affordable. Playford accelerated the industrialisation post WW2. People living in housing trust homes were making Holden, Chrysler, vehicle parts, whitegoods etc and while the homes were basic, the shit they had in England or wherever they came from wasn't great either.

I think the idea that public housing is a scarce resource for people who can't or won't work is a modern invention. It was supposed to be affordable housing, with no judgements and no time limits. It wasn't emergency housing. It filled a gap in affordable housing that private enterprise couldn't supply then or now.

Clueless.

Does it matter? Of all the people in the world to complain about, the one you choose is a dead old poor woman who was largely irrelevant. You have very strange priorities.