Massive queue in the middle of Sydney points to the city’s great shame
A queue of people snaking through the middle of one of Sydney’s most prestigious areas in the CBD points to the city’s great shame.
National
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It may not seem all that important, a queue of people snaking through the middle of Sydney’s CBD, but what waits at the end of this one points to the city’s great shame.
A few racks loaded with clothes wait at the front of the line and people shuffle quickly but carefully through, looking for their next clean outfit to wear.
When they find what suits and, importantly, fits them they discard the mismatched hangers to a plastic tub and move along. They pay nothing. The next person starts to look through the racks. And the next...
This happens every Tuesday in Martin Place when the Pass It On Clothing and Co bring in a loaded ute of hundreds of items of clean apparel and shoes for homeless and disadvantaged people to choose from.
“We pass on at least 600 to 700 pieces every Tuesday, base level,” said founder Chris Vagg.
“It’s grown massively since we started. We would’ve had maybe 10 to 15 people in Martin Place at the start, now there’s at least 60 to 70 on average. We’ve had about 118 on our busiest night.”
What started as an effort by Mr Vagg and his partner Olga Puga to cull their wardrobe in 2016 has grown into a social enterprise changing the lives of hundreds of vulnerable people each week.
“We realised that none of the good clothing in charity shops lands on people’s backs who need it, so we wanted to make sure ours did,” he said.
“We went out one night at Woolloomooloo with 11 pieces of clothing. We thought we changed the world. And we never stopped.”
Pass It On has since offloaded more than 234,000 pieces of clothing to homeless people across Sydney – at regular pop ups in Martin Place, Woolloomooloo, Parramatta, Arncliffe and Darlinghurst – and is set to reach 250,000 exchanges before their seventh anniversary in September.
The “no rips, no stains, no tears” policy ensures the city’s most vulnerable people are given the dignity to select from decent clothes that makes them “feel like they’re normal, special, which is huge when they’re marginalised everyday”.
“You realise pretty quickly how important it is to make someone feel good. You’re not only giving them some thing, you’re giving them respect,” Mr Vagg said.
“You realise ‘you don’t deserve the worst, you deserve the best’, because it’s hard enough being there without someone feeding into your struggles.”
The rule for the clothes is simple: “If you wouldn’t give it to your family, you wouldn’t give it to us.”
Pass It On accepts clothes from its corporate and business partners who have purchased a subscription a clothing bin to fill – fees which help pay for their organisation’s operating costs. It does not take individual donations.
The group has also partnered with brands including Assembly Brand and UNIQLO to get brand new clothes on the racks. Assembly is also working with Pass It On to boost its Undies for All mission for all homeless people to have the ability to wear a fresh pair of underwear each day.
Mr Vagg recalled one woman hugged him for giving her a fresh pack of underwear at one rummage, and another man thanked him for offering clothes “that regular people wear”.
“It’s sad they don’t see themselves that way, as regular people, but when they put on the clothes you can see they’re proud. Their shoulders go back, they stand taller,” he said.
But he said the success of the program is a bandaid over the festering wound that is the homelessness crisis eating away at Sydney. And, more broadly, NSW.
The February 2022 City of Sydney street count – a mini Census of sorts to capture the number of people sleeping rough in the local area – recorded 225 homeless people. In February 2020, there were 334 rough sleepers in Sydney.
News.com.au has approached the City of Sydney for the results of the latest street count.
Despite numbers of rough sleepers declining in Sydney, Homelessness NSW chief executive CEO Trina Jones said the homelessness crisis has reached “unprecedented levels” amid the ever-rising cost of living pressures.
“More than 70,000 people a year are being assisted for homelessness and we believe that underestimates the true scale of the problem, which is likely to affect thousands more people and is getting worse,” she said.
Rising cost of living, low wages, and the dire rental and housing market added to the challenge facing many families and individuals who, Ms Jones said, were trying to move forward “while they seek out a safe and affordable home”.
“The situation is bleak for those experiencing homelessness today but we want to remind governments at all levels and the public that the solution remains the same – we cannot solve homelessness without more housing,” she said.
Mr Vagg has been in talks with NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet and opposition homelessness spokeswoman Rose Jackson about finding a more sustainable solution to the homelessness problem, rather than just putting “fingers on the dam wall”.
“The crisis continues, and unfortunately when that finger covers the hole, another one opens up somewhere else,” he said.
His long-term goal is to find a space and funding to build a Pass It On Academy, which will offer a pathway out of homelessness into employment and housing.
“It’s hard for people who go home every night to understand the immediacy of the issue,” Mr Vagg said.
“If we don’t address this people are living on the street longer, in social housing longer, in crisis longer, not contributing to the pie but taking from it. And it gets harder for them to get activated.”
Originally published as Massive queue in the middle of Sydney points to the city’s great shame
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