I asked Simon, a homeless man in Melbourne who has organised protests around housing, “If you had three wishes what would they be?”
“A roof over my head, a feed every day and someone to love me who I can love back. As simple as that”, he said.
“There's not much more to life when you break it down. There are too many people who get carried away with money, worrying about their next dollar. I live with nothing and supposedly I haven't got a long time left to live, so there's not much more you need.”
Simon has been sleeping rough for well over a year. He told Green Left Weekly about his experiences of the system that is supposed to help him but which excludes him because he has no fixed address. He is further excluded from many support services because he has a pet.
Simon has spent every week of the past 18 months visiting each of six services set up to assist people who, like him, are struggling to find accommodation. He has been on the list for public housing for about 12 years: for the past five years he has been in the top priority group.
My conversation with Simon left me shocked at the inhumanity of our system. I was speechless as he told me of police taking more than $100 from him, claiming that it was “proceeds of crime” because he was begging.
Simon sits in the same place daily. Many know him and stop to say hello. This isn’t a problem for the police until public events occur nearby, and they suddenly crack down. At other times, police even stop and give money to him.
Simon has appeared before court charged with a begging offence. He had all the money he had raised confiscated as proceeds of a crime. He knows of others who have been jailed on similar charges. He says jail would be preferable to his current situation if not for his dog, Bull, who has been with him for the past 10 years.
Simon has been the inspiration for the Homeless Front, a group of supporters who wanted to help him find accommodation. They quickly found themselves at the pointy end of the housing crisis.
Faced with massive waiting lists for public housing, the support network for people experiencing homelessness is massively under-resourced. The Homeless Front has started seeking changes to the system that has failed Simon and many others.
I met Pam Baragwonath and Richard Tate from the Homeless Front a week earlier at an August 4 protest outside the office of the state housing minister Richard Wynne.
Wynne’s office staff locked the doors, refusing entrance to Pam and Richard, who wanted to deliver a letter for the minister.
Richard told GLW a policy shift in the 1980s meant housing changed from a human right to an investment. He said that change led to the current housing and homelessness crisis. On any given night, 100,000 people are homeless. About 32,000 people sleep rough while others find shelter in cars, on friends’ couches or in insecure and emergency accommodation.
In the name of “public-private partnerships”, land that was once used for public housing is divided and large portions are allocated for private development. Suburbs have been gentrified and lower-income families and households are pushed out.
In Simon's case, a workplace injury left him out of work and unable to pay the ever-increasing rent in the boarding house where he lived. He was evicted and had nowhere to go.
He told GLW most people would have no idea of the problems faced by him and others in similar situations.
What does a typical week look like for Simon?
“I sleep under a bridge most nights. I've made myself a little campsite. I did have a mattress, blankets and a doona but someone has stolen them. I beg on the streets to get enough money to survive and to (get accommodation). I have to find $48 a night, which happens maybe once or twice a week.
“Other than that, I spend my day between chasing housing organisations and trying to maintain some sort of dignity, healthiness and focus because it is easy to give up.”
Simon is caught in a system that excludes him from accessing homeless services because he doesn’t have a postal address, phone number, email address or internet access.
“It is a vicious cycle”, he said. Many government offices say they need to call him back, but how can they when he doesn’t have a number? Emergency and temporary housing services are vastly under resourced: they have become expert at telling people what they need to hear to go away because, in reality, they have nothing for them.
Centrelink is incapable of dealing with an “address-less” person — even the health system struggles to deal with them.
The issue of homelessness and the housing crisis has been largely ignored in the political arena. After a brief period in the political sun when the Rudd Labor government was elected in 2007, the homeless have been returned to the shadows.
They are the invisible of society, unseen and ignored; their plight represents the failings of our whole society.
It is time, however, to bring homeless people out into the open, and for the broader society to engage with them and learn from them.
[Shane Anderson works with Cornerstone Contact Centre in Dandenong, providing food and community to homeless and marginalised people. He has close personal contact with people struggling with homelessness.]