In Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome book series, Aurelia is a businesswoman who takes care of the Suburran insula where her family lived for many years. She organizes everything and does all the accounting. I understand there is little historical information about Aurelia, and McCullough adds colourful details to her (excellent) novels, so I'd like to know if there is any evidence that Aurelia was actually a landlady that could provide for herself and her family (for a time, anyway. Advancing in the cursus honorum required an insane amount of money).
We know pretty much nothing about Aurelia. We know she was Caesar's mother and Aurelius Cotta's daughter, and that she testified as to Clodius' presence at the Bona Dea rites in 62. She died sometime in or before 54, according to Suetonius not long before Julia. That's pretty much it. It's not inconceivable that she might own some insulae--nothing prevented women from owning land by Roman law--but the suggestion that the Aurelians or Caesars lived in an insula at any time is utterly absurd at best. Aurelius Cotta was proconsul of Cisalpine Gaul in 74 and consul 75. Though Suetonius says that before Caesar moved to the house of the pontifex maximus he lived in the Subura there is literally no reason to suppose that the family lived in one of the one-room, lightless tenements that served as little more than a nighttime resting place for the often migratory urban poor. Presumably McCullough is interpreting Suetonius' modicus aedibus, "in modest lodgings," to mean an insula rather than domus. While aedes, especially in the plural, can mean an insula or a collection of insulae it can also mean a domus or pretty much any other dwelling. To suppose that the Caesars at any point lived in an insula totally misunderstands the situation of the Caesars and the social circumstances of the urban poor