Suburbs join outback for homeless hotspots

    by: Patricia Karvelas
    From: The Australian
    March 16, 2013


Some Sydney and Melbourne suburbs are in the top 20 most overcrowded in Australia.

SYDNEY'S western suburbs and Melbourne's southeastern suburban belt are suffering the nation's most overcrowded conditions after remote Northern Territory indigenous communities.    

A place-by-place breakdown of census data reveals that Auburn, Fairfield, Mount Druitt and Merrylands in Sydney, as well as Melbourne's Dandenong, are in the top 20 most overcrowded places in Australia, where low-income families are being driven into overcrowded conditions by a lack of affordable housing.    

The results -- developed by Mission Australia using 2011 census data -- reveal homelessness and overcrowding at a local level for the first time. Those suffering the highest rates of overcrowding include households of vulnerable refugee and migrant families, the analysis reveals.

Mission Australia chief executive Toby Hall said that with severe overcrowding accounting for most of the rise in homelessness in the census, two thirds of this number were born overseas.


"From Brisbane city's large population of boarding house residents, to rough sleepers in Sydney's inner city and the extraordinary number of individuals and families living in severely overcrowded conditions throughout the Northern Territory, we're facing a range of very daunting challenges," he said.    

"Overwhelmingly, the different nature of homelessness shows we need tailored local solutions. Tackling homelessness in East Arnhem Land needs a different response to inner-city Sydney or Melbourne. Our responses have to suit the circumstances."

The results reveal that the NT faces the most shocking homelessness situation. Whichever the list -- total homeless numbers or severe overcrowding -- regional areas in the Territory fill the first five places. "In the NT the homelessness problem is primarily about severe overcrowding in squalid conditions. Around 30 per cent of East Arnhem Land's population are living in homes that require a minimum of four extra bedrooms to adequately accommodate all members of the household," Mr Hall said.

He said this was seen in West Arnhem, Katherine, the Barkly Tableland and Alice Springs. "While there are cultural reasons at play here . . . in terms of the desire of extended families to live together, overwhelmingly this is a problem related to a lack of affordable housing."

Mr Hall said western Sydney was ground zero for homeless families. The supply of affordable housing had decreased due in part to real estate agents discriminating against large families.

While acknowledging the contributions by the federal government through the National Rental Affordability Scheme and the Social Housing Growth Fund, the scale of the problem was such "it's barely been able to touch the sides".    

He said the NPAH represented a comprehensive approach to homelessness but governments needed to build on it. "It's a moral indictment on our nation that in a country with our wealth and resources so many people don't have a place to call their home."    

Blanket of indifference over homelessness

    by: TOBY HALL
    From: The Australian
    March 16, 2013 12:00AM

   

THE rate of homelessness in Australia is a scandal.

It is a moral indictment on our nation that in a country with our wealth and resources, so many people don't have a secure, safe place to live.    

Homelessness in Australia is a largely hidden problem.

It is also a problem that is in danger of falling off the national political agenda.

Yet now, for the first time, Mission Australia has used 2011 census data to shed new light on the homelessness issue and to create a homelessness profile of every region in the country.

It reveals that just a tiny fraction of homeless people sleep rough on our city streets; the vast majority "exist" in our suburbs and country regions.

It also puts a spotlight on the growing issue of chronic overcrowding in our suburbs. Visit the outer suburbs of our major metropolitan cities - Dandenong in Melbourne, Mount Druitt or Auburn in Sydney - and you will increasingly find rented two-bedroom apartments in which up to three families are living together.


In these apartments, children and adults sleep six to a room.    

It's a story that's mirrored in remote and regional parts of the country where Aboriginal Australians continue to suffer the worst housing in the nation as they live in obscenely overcrowded and squalid conditions.

Yet homelessness is not intractable. And we do know how to solve it.

Without the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness, which provided $1.1 billion funding for 180 new and improved services, Australia's homeless problem would be far worse.

During the past four years, federal and state governments have developed better strategies and in most cases directed their funds more accurately.

The Common Ground approach to getting rough sleepers off the streets and into permanent accommodation - now up and running in five capital cities - is reaping results. And the injection of social housing funds under the GFC stimulus package has also been crucial. These efforts follow a generation of policy failure on homelessness.    

It will take more than four years to turn things around, but just as the first green shoots of progress are appearing, it appears the issue has fallen down the national political agenda.

The federal and state governments are yet to strike a deal to commit to a one-year extension of the NPAH.

If it's allowed to expire on June 30, 80,000 disadvantaged Australians will be left with nowhere to turn for help; 3400 community service jobs would be on the line.    

But even if a one-year deal is struck, our nation's leaders must seize the initiative on homelessness and reach a new four-year agreement.

Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott, locked in the longest Australian election campaign in history, must articulate their policies on housing and homelessness, and put both at the top of the political agenda where they belong.

We can reduce homelessness in this country.

All we need is the political will.

Toby Hall is the chief executive of Mission Australia.