Unlike some people, I don't just think about homelessness via a news story here and there regarding the statistics, the blight on a city's image according to the authorities, or - in rare instances - a revealing and in-depth exposé on the actuality of living with absolutely no reassurance of anything in the next few hours let alone tomorrow - I relive it.
My homelessness is a bit like PTSD in some respects. It's never going to completely go away, it brings on nightmares, impacts on my anxieties and it affects my living choices even now.
I was 15 when my father sold up everything and uprooted us to the other end of the state in order to buy a business. We were living above that business in the accommodation provided to us there - which apart from being substandard for a young teenage girl, with a communal public bathroom, no privacy and no security - it destroyed what was left of my parent's relationship. By the time I was 16 they were going their separate ways. Neither of them asked me what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go.
The original half-baked plan was for me to go to my grandmother to live one thousand miles away with her in her house. Unfortunately during this time, my grandmother rented her house and was living in a cabin in the back yard with no indoor bathroom or toilet facilities.
The people who lived in my grandmother's house were on a very good wicket. They had cheap rent in return for looking after the property for my grandmother. They couldn't find accommodation they could afford anywhere else and my grandmother was a soft touch. When I turned up expecting to see my grandmother in the house and live with her, they took it upon themselves to embark on a campaign to twist the narrative to the point where my easily-led grandmother thought that I was there to make her life a misery, while they were there to help make her life easier.
Sounds like a fantastical story. Especially to me at the time, who at 16 had no idea that what they were doing was psychologically damaging and probably illegal. When you are 16 and vulnerable you automatically look to the people you think you can trust the most to help you out. As the last of my trusted allies turned their back on me - I saw no option but to pack what I had into a small suitcase and leave to save my young battered ego. To her credit my grandmother gave me some money 'to tide me over' until I could get benefits, find a job and get on my feet. I remember the stunned shock of the moment. And the fear. And I remember walking down the street in the dark with a suitcase. Mobile phones were nonexistent. Phoning a friend wasn't an option as I didn't know anybody in the area and I had no idea where my mother and father were at the time.
The first night I sat in a bus shelter. It was cold but I had warm clothes. I remember crying and wishing I had a 'proper family' and that I was home in bed with an electric blanket and a dog. Even then I had enough sense to stay in a well-lit area close to the local shopping centre, too scared to move until daylight.
Visiting what we then called 'The Commonwealth Employment Service' the next day to apply for the dole was a much less harrowing experience than it is now. My only problem was not having a mailing address. Back then unemployment cheques were posted out to an active address. So I lied and gave them my grandmother's address. I was too ashamed even then to tell anybody at the employment office I had nowhere to live and too scared that I wouldn't get any money if I didn't give them an address. All I had to do was be at my grandmother's on the designated mailing day and grab the envelope before anybody else got to it first. Most of the time I succeeded and if I didn't I could get a counter cheque from the employment service.
Over the next two years I would experience what it was like to live from day to day, sometimes unemployed, sometimes working, sometimes couch surfing and sometimes sleeping rough. I learned who to trust and who not to trust or suffer the consequences - of which still haunt me today. To this point I have only spoken of some of it - and then only to a psychiatrist.
Of all the experiences I have had in my life, this has had the most impact. Not just being homeless but every single issue that attached itself to it. The fear and the vulnerability were never absent. The stress of a myriad of dangerous situations I found myself in still haunt me today. To say I have home security issues would be an understatement. I have a state-of-the-art alarm system, security doors, security windows and key locks. I check all of these on a regular basis.
I consider myself fortunate that I managed to find my way out of my situation through hard work, study and a kind of resilience. I don't know if it was determination, drive or just fear of ever going back there again that pushed me. There were also more government agencies well placed to help people like me if they wanted to get ahead, unlike now.
If there is only one positive to speak of out of a bad situation then it would have to be the empathy it has given me regarding our present homeless situation in this country.
Homelessness has reached epic proportions in Australia. The ABS Census counted 116,427 people who were homeless in 2016. This figure had increased by 14,000 people in five years. Now four years later in 2020, we have experienced the bush fire crisis where many people lost their homes and are still living in tents, caravans or couch surfing. Then, of course we have been severely impacted by COVID-19 regarding loss of lives, restrictions, loss of livelihoods and ballooning unemployment. The government stimulus have staved off some of the impact of the economical damage but it will not help the majority in the next 12 months if it does not embrace the social responsibility that comes with economic recovery. Homelessness will increase to epidemic levels if the government continues to cut funding to essential services specifically to help those who are at most risk of becoming homeless, eg, unemployed, families facing financial stress, those with mental illness and domestic violence victims.
Federal government and state government services for affordable housing continue to dwindle and the stock of public housing has continued to decline between 2011 and 2016. I would surmise that this downward trajectory has continued throughout the period between 2016 and 2020, considering the lessening availability of public housing, the continuing rise of people looking for affordable public housing and demonstrable rising homelessness. New South Wales has had the biggest percentage increase in homelessness in the Census time period but this does not include the disproportionate number of Indigenous Australians in comparison to other groups impacted by homelessness. While other states, with the exception of the ACT, have risen, I have to question why in New South Wales homelessness is rising so dramatically. One of the main reasons is that NSW "was one of the first states to introduce fixed-term tenancies in public housing". This, of course, creates a more unstable environment for housing tenants in NSW and does not solve the immediate problem of housing waitlist numbers. It is also noted that Premier Gladys Berejiklian was criticised for the 2019 NSW state budget which did not provide any funding for the promised "halving the number of people sleeping on the streets by 2025". Nor did she commit any funding for "any additional social and affordable housing". "NSW Council of Social Service chief executive, Joanna Quilty, claimed the budget showed the NSW government was not committed to tackling homelessness and disadvantage". Currently NSW have a waiting listing of approximately 60,000 people for public housing. They often have to wait for up to ten years in some areas.
At a federal level, in 2008 the Rudd Government launched "The Road Home - A Federal Government White Paper" which set an ambitious target to halve homelessness by 2020. It primarily focused on early intervention services, improving and expanding services, ensuring services were more connected and ensuring people were able to move quickly through the system into stable housing. Of course, as we know, the Labor government lost the election and the Abbott government and succeeding governments have abandoned the 2008 strategy. Successive conservative governments have been responsible for changing the social security system with "lower payments and more conditions of eligibility and sanctioning of claimants". There have been no legitimate welfare rises in accordance to the cost of living and all welfare recipients live well under the poverty line. By international standards "subsidised social housing provision is minimal". People who are relying on lower cost social housing have nowhere to turn in an increasingly unaffordable and dwindling private rental market.
Homelessness, of course, isn't new. It wasn't even new when I was homeless. Homelessness has been around since colonisation when "the British moved Indigenous Australians out of their physical living structures" and was again most apparent during the Great Depression. As the decades moved on our standards of living became higher, which brought into focus the stark reality of the differences between the haves and the have-nots. People began to 'see' homeless people as something that they themselves did not want to become. Not much was done about it at the time - except to avoid confrontation and to label those who were indeed homeless as being "down on their luck", "alcoholics", "transient" and "criminal". "The common theme was that homelessness was the result of a failure which was only the birth of the stigma related to disadvantage in Australia which has influenced generations and ingrained stereotyping of these groups as an acceptable practice". Which is the problem, unfortunately.
Despite the continued stereotyping of homelessness, it continues to expand and affect people from all different backgrounds, socially and economically. It is not a 'one size fits all' and never has been. It is true that poverty, unemployment, environment, alcohol, drugs and violence can play a part in homelessness but in recent times there have been more issues of homelessness arising among people who are employed and are simply not able to sustain a level of income high enough to pay for the increasing private rents, utilities, food and family expenses. We come back again to the social housing structures that have been steadily eroding under successive governments, departments and social and welfare support system funding for people on low incomes, as well as a lack of real safety nets for the unemployed.
Conservative governments are increasingly pushing the capitalistic ideologies of "individual responsibility" onto our social and democratic structures that rely on cohesion and support for the many, not just the one. It is quite obvious in the statement by Scott Morrison - “I believe in a fair go for those who have a go, and what that means is part of the promise that we all keep as Australians is that we make a contribution and don't seek to take one" - that he believes that not everyone is pulling their weight and that people, including all of those on welfare or any kind of support should be doing their part and contributing. If they don't contribute then the government will not support them. He is also using the statement to marginalise the already marginalised people on welfare support, stereotyping them as "leaners", vilifying them publicly to be megaphoned by a complicit media.
Our current federal government cuts social spending to the bone, it cuts welfare, cuts funding to organisations that help people on welfare, who are homeless, who rely on support for disability services and who are in need of public housing. This government have not stopped at cutting spending on the above, they have cut spending to education, select university courses, TAFE, apprenticeships, while implementing penalty rate cuts and IR changes that will undoubtedly affect the above demographic who are trying to "have a fair go" but would also need to supplement their incomes because of the changes the government have made in the past.
"Governments have let this happen".
For this government to do anything about homelessness in this country it needs to recognise it has a problem with homelessness. There has been nothing in federal budgets to indicate that they are prepared to provide any developments towards implementing any kind of social structure to relieve the pressure on an already underperforming system of their own creation. This 'head in the sand' and 'fair go' approach is complicit to failure to our most vulnerable Australian people.
I think about people who are under so much financial pressure they are just one unpaid bill away from where I was so many years ago. I think about people who are already there. I'm not sure I would have survived had the system been like it is now. It is not a system that is there to help people who are like I was. It is a system designed to hinder them at every turn, to make it more difficult - deliberately - to obtain welfare. I think about the help I obtained and the contributions I have made to the system and society and I know I've paid it back tenfold. Most of these people are not leaners. All they want is to be afforded the respect they deserve to be able to get on their feet and become contributing members of society, no matter what the contribution. It's the most important aspect of human nature for most people - to help others and to give back a little of what they have been given.
This government are so far removed from the possibility that social generosity plays a part in dividends for them in the long term - dividends that would inevitably be realised in a more prosperous economy that was the direct result of of the very people who would have been enabled by a benevolent government - that they will fail us all.
As for myself, I have long since reconciled with my parents and my family and have come to terms with most of my past, despite the lingering psychological issues that are with me still. I find I am most at peace when I can contribute in the community or help others in some way try to navigate the vindictive cycle that is our present system.
Seeking human kindness in a system that is designed to focus on the achievements and monetary value of the individual rather than the costs of the basic needs and welfare of each individual is doomed to fail.
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