Life on the edge: South Australia’s worsening hidden homelessness crisis

THE figures huddled under blankets on footpaths, the families living on the breadline in homes without power, the queues of impoverished waiting for food handouts — such scenes are becoming all too common in Adelaide as people struggle to survive day to day.

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STANDING in the backyard of her run-down home clutching her dog, Snoopy, scientist Wendy takes in her surroundings and ponders how her life came to this.

Six years ago she was a laboratory technician in charge of quality-control testing, making the most of her double degree in physics and chemistry.

But when the company folded, Wendy’s comfortable existence vanished and within months she was living in her car.

“It happened so fast,” Wendy says. “It was terrifying. One minute I was doing OK, the next minute I was living in my car.”

Wendy at her Elizabeth Downs home. Picture: Tait Schmaal

Tens of thousands of South Australians such as Wendy are living on the breadline, with the threat of homelessness ever-present.

Ten years ago, Greg Pattinson was the chief executive of Maggie Beer Products, helping to develop the company from a niche manufacturing business into a household name in SA and beyond.

He now leads another food supplier, which is thriving for all the wrong reasons.

As the CEO of FoodBank SA since 2014, he has seen nothing but growth in the organisation that supplies 550 agencies with 450,000 meals each and every month.

“Three years ago in SA we were supplying 56,000 people per month who were seeking food relief and that’s now gone up to 102,000 per month,” he says.

“Over 50 per cent is due to unexpected bills or bill shock. It is electricity or rent or the mortgage, or some other misfortune that has presented itself to these people.

A third of those who rely on FoodBank to survive are children.

Demand for its services matches growing evidence that more and more South Australians are finding themselves homeless. An estimated 400 are sleeping on the streets each and every night.

Foodbank SA CEO Greg Pattinson in the warehouse at Edwardstown. Picture: AAP/ Keryn Stevens

However, close to 5000 people are technically regarded as homeless – in shelters, cars, couch surfing or living in overcrowded accommodation.

“The largest percentage of people that come and get food are low-income families who, for whatever reason, are struggling to put food on the table,” Mr Pattinson says.

“They make sure the kids are OK and that they have a roof over their heads, but it is a matter of ‘honey, you and I don’t eat this week’.

“They have got homes and they have got jobs, but they come and see us because there is not enough money in the household once they have paid bills.”

Mr Pattinson’s concerns are replicated by Cindy Adey, team leader of Uniting SA’s anti-poverty programs.

The services are run out of Port Adelaide, the council district that boasts the highest number of homeless people in SA.

It is 10am on a Tuesday morning and clients are sifting through a range of clothes, priced at 50c, on a rack at the organisation’s op-shop.

The clothes used to be given away but they would sometimes end up in garage sales down the road.

Now if someone is in desperate need for clothes, Uniting SA will help them out.

“This here is a different world,” Ms Adey, a former nurse, tells the Sunday Mail.

“There are people sleeping under the bridges in Port Adelaide, at the library, on the front doorstop of our office.

“I’ve arrived at the office at 8am and there is a client lying on the doorstep. “He has pulled all of the clothes out of the bin to stay warm.”

Ms Adey says rising utility bills are driving more people to the service.

Lynne Maree-McLaughlin, a financial counsellor at the church’s anti-poverty centre, says it is becoming “extraordinarily easy” to end up without enough money for rent.

“So many people today don’t have savings if there is an emergency or illness,” Ms Maree-McLaughlin says.

“All it takes is not being able to pay the rent for two weeks. It does not take much to go from housed to homeless.

“A lot of the general population do not understand the depth of this. It could happen to anyone at any time.”

One of the clients on the day the Sunday Mail visits Uniting SA is 83-year-old Grange widow Jeanette.

“Every time I get a bill, the price is going up, up, up,” she says.

“I don’t have the lights on when I am watching TV, and then if I want to go up the passage I use a torch.

“The torch goes with me everywhere. The only light that I do get in my house is a candle beside my late husband’s photo.

“I light that every night before I go to bed.”

Jeanette’s two sons, aged 62 and 63, have both moved in with her.

“Now I have got a daughter who has been tipped out of where she has been renting and she wants to come home, too.

“She’s got nowhere to go. I’ve been helping her get packed and sorted. I’m 83 but I don’t stop.”

In the past year, Uniting SA has given out 1820 food parcels, 2486 gift cards for food and 435 clothing vouchers.

The traditional stereotype of homeless people being older men, often with substance abuse issues, is contradicted by client statistics.

More than half (54.7 per cent) of its clients are female, and among those there are only 10 instances of alcohol or drugs being considered reasons for referral.

Many women seeking services at places such as Uniting SA are fleeing domestic violence. Others have found themselves without an income following marriage breakdowns.

Elizabeth Park local Glen Barnes with Cos We Care founder Ann Cooper with some fresh food in Freemont Park. Picture: AAP/Brenton Edwards

In Adelaide’s northern suburbs, a humble food van operation again highlights the growing need to help those on the breadline.

Volunteer Ann Cooper has visited Fremont Park, in Elizabeth, for the past two years, giving meals, food packs and clothing to people in need.

Visiting the van on a Saturday morning, it is impossible not to be struck by the variety of clients.

Within two hours, Ann and her volunteers – many of them previously homeless or disadvantaged – distribute food to dozens of people including former Holden workers, a computer scientist, a botanist, a former ice addict and three sisters.

A bearded man with a SA Best trucker cap quietly talks to other clients.

He has come a long way since the days when he was sleeping in the park and would just watch Ann and her clients from a distance.

At Christmas, his mother – thankful for the friendship Ann and her volunteers have provided to her son – baked them a cake.

Salisbury man Michael is one of the people helping out.

“I lived on the street for about eight months,” he says. “It’s a hard life out there. Ann helped me out.”

Michael says more and more people are finding themselves homeless.

“It is getting harder to survive,” he says. “You can’t even find a house. It’s hard to get on the Housing Trust list.”

Ann’s partner, John, says the van has strict rules about how it distributes food which, at times, can be hard to understand for new clients, some of whom suffer from mental illness.

John says one man threw a can at him with so much force it missed and hit a toilet block about 20m away.

“That’s because he was told he could only take one can (of food) at a time,” John says.

But he adds it’s rare that the volunteers see signs of violence in Elizabeth.

It can be a different matter in the city, where the scourge of the drug ice has made some clients more aggressive.

The idea of homelessness and violence coexisting has been placed in the spotlight in recent months because of ongoing concerns about the Hutt Street Centre in the CBD’s southeastern corner.

Established by the Daughters of Charity in 1954, it is arguably the most well-recognised provider of homelessness services in SA.

The centre – just a stone’s throw from the south parklands – offers refuge for those who have nowhere else to turn.

In the past year, it has provided people with 8500 showers and done 4200 loads of washing for its clients.

Some local cafe owners, and a few Adelaide City Council members, have raised a raft of concerns about a small number of the Hutt Street Centre’s clients who, they say,, are terrorising residents, shopkeepers, workers and diners.

The Sunday Mail spent a Friday morning at the centre and found a busy, friendly atmosphere.

Over the course of the morning, the acute tip of homelessness is laid bare in the centre that helps most of the city’s rough sleepers, along with a growing number of people just doing it tough.

Three men gather around an urn preparing strong cups of coffee, loaded with sugar, discussing how one of them was nearly stabbed by a man wielding a screwdriver the night before.

“He was a big fella man, he was scary,” a man in his late 40s tells his mates.

A bunch of men sit in a common area watching morning TV.

A young man in a red hooded jumper is catching up on some sleep on a couch, while an older man sleeps in a chair opposite.

Beside them, on a bookshelf littered with Tom Clancy and Wilbur Smith novels, hangs a sign that reads “Make your dreams happen”.

Foodbank AS chief executive Greg Pattinson with volunteers Laura Culbert (Foodbank) & Tracey Noblet (Ikea) and some of the products on offer at the pop-up food store at Elizabeth Downs. Picture: Bianca De Marchi

But time for dreaming in running out before the centre closes at 1pm.

Before the doors shut, dozens of men and women converge for lunch – beef burgers, onion gravy and vegetables, with chocolate cake and cream for dessert.

More than 50,000 meals are prepared and served each year, with the support of about 20 kitchen volunteers each day.

Brendon Liddicoat has worked for four years at Uniting Care SA, supporting people at risk of homelessness.

He says the housing options for people are getting less and less, largely because of affordability.

“If we have clients on Newstar,t their housing affordability through Housing SA is deemed at $161 per week, but you can’t get a private rental in western Adelaide for less than $200 per week,” he says.

“So if you are on Newstart, you can’t afford a private rental.”

Mr Liddicoat says a growing demographic among the people he helps comprises single women aged over 22.

“They may be stay-at-home mothers, they may not have any super to back them up and suffered financial abuse from their partners so, suddenly, they come to us and they may be 30 or 40 and on a Newstart income,” he says.

“But there are only 16 emergency beds for females over 22 in the whole state.

“That is a huge issue that is only getting worse. The wait list can be one to two months at least.

“A lot of people are couch-surfing in situations that aren’t safe.”

Joe Gannon, manager of Western Adelaide Homelessness Services, describes the situation as a crisis. He particularly fears for young people.

Mr Gannon says dwindling public housing stock, increased costs in the private rental market and casualisation of the workforce is to blame for SA’s homeless woes.

“All of these factors are creating a perfect tsunami of unaffordable living in Australia,” he says.

Social housing in SA has dwindled significantly over the past two decades – from making up about 11 per cent of all housing in 1991 to about six per cent in 2018.

“What concerns us is that we are seeing more and more families coming in through homelessness,” Mr Gannon says.

“There is family conflict and domestic violence, which gets a lot of media attention, but we are dealing with a lot of families that are just doing it hard.

“We can have as many as 10 appointments a day just walking in and saying ‘I’m homeless’ that day, and we have got to try and find something before 5pm.

“We have over 500 children aged under 12 years old that attend this service each year – that is quite significant for one service alone.

“To date, we have managed to not send a young child under 12 back on to the streets.

“Our concern is that we don’t see any children on the streets but, if we keep going the way we’re going, we are really concerned that will occur.

“We’re talking about newborn babies; we’re not just talking about youth.”

At the other end of the scale, clients are also getting older.

“We housed an 82-year-old man recently. We’re talking to elderly men who can no longer work who didn’t have super set up for themselves,” he says.

Mr Gannon says many of these men end up in boarding houses.

“And they are unsafe, there’s no two ways about it,” he says.

Mr Gannon says the solution lies in a collaborative response across federal, state and local governments, with strong input from community organisations.

“It is a national crisis. People are doing it hard,” he says.