‘$6 for 4 months’: Community centre runs out of funding as public demand for financial help soars

A Brisbane community centre can no longer keep up with public demand for financial aid, burning through $20,000 in a week.

Rodney Tegen is facing living in his car after being evicted from his apartment in Bowen Hills. Picture: Liam Kidston

A Brisbane community organisation designed to help people struggling financially has been left with just $6 in emergency relief funding for the next four months as public demand for assistance skyrockets.

The Bardon Neighbourhood Centre and its sibling venue New Farm Neighbourhood Centre burned through $20,000 in Department of Social Services funding in just one week, giving out supermarket vouchers to individuals and families unable to afford the basics to live.

Bardon co-ordinator Gillian Marshall said the number of people crying out for help had tripled in the past year, with those on Centrelink payments struggling the most.

“From the start of this year we’ve just been so slammed with ER (emergency relief),” she said. 

“Compared to last year, it’s quite consuming the number of people we’re engaging with in financial hardship and are struggling to support themselves or their family, and there are way more housing issues and people being turfed out of their homes because of greedy landlords putting the rent up.

“There’s not enough housing stock and it’s just really hard for people.”

Ms Marshall said the community centre had even had to establish an emergency relief hotline due to the number of calls for financial aid.

“Some of them are really in crisis. We get quite a few who have escaped domestic violence, or have mental health issues, or they’re waiting on Centrelink payments to change, or had a big life change, and then you’ve got the extreme of people who haven’t eaten for three days,” she said.

Despite scrambling for extra government funding, Ms Marshall said the centre would most likely have to stop its emergency relief program until the end of the financial year when they would be given their next allocation of funds on July 1. This means turning away hundreds of people desperate for help.

“It is disappointing because I feel the same thing happened last year and we paused for a month because we didn’t have enough funding. It’s like, ‘Can you just fund us properly?’,” she said.

QCOSS chief executive Aimee McVeigh said it wasn’t just the neighbourhood centres that were struggling to provide enough aid to those doing it tough, but community services everywhere.

“Right now, the sector that cares for Queenslanders is underfunded and under-resourced,” she said.

“It’s only fair that we have a properly resourced social service sector so all Queenslanders are assured that they will be supported through life’s challenges.”

Despite only having $6 left in the joint emergency kitty, the Bardon centre will still continue to offer its regular food program, providing a variety of free groceries through charities like SecondBite and Oz Harvest to those unable to afford food.

It is this assistance that has been a godsend for Rodney Tegen.

The 56-year-old former hairdresser, who has nerve damage in his elbows and can’t work, fell on hard times after a divorce settlement and a failed business venture stripped him of his savings.

He was forced to live in his car for 18 months, before finding a one-bedroom unit in Bowen Hills to rent with a friend. He has been sleeping on a single bed in the dining room of the tiny apartment for the past five years, but has just been given a notice to vacate, with his rental agreement, which ends on March 2, not being renewed.

“I cried for two days and had panic attacks for two days when I found out we were getting kicked out,” said Mr Tegen, who lives off just $948 per fortnight from Centrelink.

“I’m really frightened of ending up in the car again.”

The former businessman said he had been relying on food from the Bardon Neighbourhood Centre to eat for the past year, with his money consumed by rent and bills.

“Being able to have some food just makes all the difference,” he said. “(Without the centre) it would be 10 days OK and four days without food.”

He was now turning to the Bardon Centre to help him find alternative accommodation, but didn’t like his chances as a single male.

“I don’t know how I’m going to pay the four weeks rent in advance and then the two weeks bond,” he said.

“Worst comes to worst (my car) is where I’ll go.”