Homeless: rash vow or overdue goal

The rise of homelessness in Australia has touched the nation's social conscience. Now Kevin Rudd is promising to halve homeless numbers. How can it be done?

The rise of homelessness in Australia has defied successive governments and touched the nation's social conscience. Now Kevin Rudd is promising to halve homeless numbers. How can it be done?

WAS the federal government rash when it promised a year ago that it would cut the nation's homeless queues in half by 2020? Will Kevin Rudd suffer the same fate as another Labor prime minister, Bob Hawke, who was haunted by his 1987 claim that within three years no Australian child would live in poverty?

The short answer is probably yes. Common sense suggests it will be very hard to reduce by 50 per cent the 100,000 people defined as homeless, given an increasing population and high levels of family breakdown, substance abuse and mental illness -- and Australia's dire shortage of cheap rental.

Last week, when The Weekend Australian checked on progress, we found general agreement that, if anything, things had gotten worse, thanks to the pressures of the global financial crisis.

Yet the more complex answer is that putting metrics to policy in an area of voter fatigue and entrenched low expectations focuses the media and public's attention, along with government resources and effort.

If you want to break cycles, says the Salvation Army's David Eldridge, a veteran of the area, you need to set "bold goals".

Those goals, which include providing beds for all 16,000 people /sleeping rough every night, have been matched by an unprecedented effort to create more affordable housing -- everything from emergency hostels to innovative living arrangements for street people to subsidising community groups to build new, cheaper rental homes for low-income tenants.

For the homeless alone, there is more than $4 billion of new money over four years -- excluding a 10-year roll-out of remote indigenous housing. Any way you cut it, it's a lot of moolah.

Many working in the area are nervous about reaching the 2020 goals. But there is a lot of support. Eldridge, who directs social services in the Salvos' southern region, says: "I think there is a growing sense that we can do something about it. I am pretty hopeful. Even if we don't reach the 50 per cent scenario, we'll give it a pretty good shot."

A DECADE ago I wrote a column about a woman who had started sleeping in the tiny public garden at the end of my street. I wrote of how confronted I had been when my efforts to hand over a blanket or a sleeping bag on a rainy night were summarily rejected. I wrote of how challenged my middle-class conscience had been by the realisation that while I wanted to help, I was not at all interested in this bolshie and unattractive person sleeping on my veranda, let alone my front room.

Ten years on, I scarcely give the drifters in my neigbourhood a second glance, so habituated am I (like many other inner-city Australians) to the homeless.

I note, however, the park lady, who is still around. I suspect she is still sleeping out, although she looks, if anything, healthier than she did in the 1990s. But she, like the other 16,000 Australians now officially labelled as "rough sleepers", are just the most visible part of the homeless problem. About 85 per cent of the 100,000 homeless are not actually sleeping outdoors, according to the government's key policy document, the December 2008 White Paper called The Road Home.

Instead, they are on the edge, often marginalised and, in effect, camping in temporary or substandard accommodation. They are technically housed but, says Eldridge, their experience is of homelessness and the impact on the rest of their lives is just as devastating.

Australia, unlike Britain and the US, has always had a definition of the homeless that goes well beyond rough sleepers. In social policy terms it means the quantum of those needing help is larger, but it also recognises the reality of people's lives when they struggle for the basics, such as shelter.

Thanks to landmark work from Victorian researchers Chris Chamberlain and David MacKenzie (who in effect count the homeless every five years) Australia is also one of the few countries with solid data. The latest figures, based on the 2006 Census, paint a picture of specific groups with clearly identifiable problems.

Three-quarters of homeless people are single -- albeit many of them parents who have lost children and partners along with their homes -- but the most worrying statistics concern the increase in families in trouble. Between 2001 and 2006, there was a 33 per cent increase in the number of families seeking specialist (emergency) help with accommodation.

The number of families with children who are homeless increased by 11 per cent in those five years and there was a 22 per cent rise in the number of homeless children under 12.

On the positive side, there was a 16 per cent cut in homeless youths aged 12 to 18 after the Howard government pushed early intervention and employment programs for this group.

Domestic violence is the main reason (55 per cent) women with children seek emergency help. Indigenous Australians are over-represented, constituting 9 per cent of the homeless but only 2 per cent of the population.

The dreadful cycle of cause and effect is obvious when it comes to employment and housing. Losing a job can lead to eviction, but the problem doesn't end there because it's so hard to get a job while sleeping rough. Only 11 per cent of people who leave specialist housing services have a job to go to.

But the big problem is mental illness. The white paper says that 36 per cent of people looking for emergency shelter are either substance abusers, mentally ill, or both.

People in the field working with rough sleepers (who often don't even seek help) say the figure is much, much higher in that group.

THERE is little doubt this is a priority area for the Rudd government. By counting new money allocated over the next four years to housing for indigenous and non-indigenous Australians who are not homeless, but need affordable accommodation, the government claims a figure of $9bn of extra spending, above the $6.2bn already allocated under the main federal-state funding program, the National Affordable Housing Agreement. (The indigenous spending is over 10 years.) The government had made big commitments based on the 2008 white paper, but the sector lucked out early last year as Canberra threw another $5.6bn at the problem as part of its anti-GFC stimulus package. Will it work?

ELDRIDGE says the big challenge is to develop a co-ordinated approach through the commonwealth, the states, the community sector providers such as the Salvation Army, and a corporate sector increasingly involved as part of its corporate social responsibility commitments.

He says years of failure to build enough public housing has had a cumulative impact.

"We were lucky [until now] that there were vacancies in the private rental market that the government could use for public housing tenants," he says. "But the vacancies are not there any longer."

Mission Australia's chief executive officer Toby Hall says the sector has been so neglected by successive governments that it needs another 250,000 rental houses within the range of low and moderate income earners. He, like others, applauds the money as significant but says it will "barely make a dent in demand" as homeless people miss out while the impact of stock shortages continue to cascade downwards.

Harry Triguboff, the managing director of the Meriton property group, wrote in The Australian this week that while the private sector was "no panacea" to the ongoing problems of the homeless, the restrictions imposed by local government were preventing companies like his own from building stock for which there was clear demand.

The federal government says there will be an extra 10,000 homes for the homeless (75 per cent of these by the end of this year) with a grand total of 80,000 new social and affordable homes by 2012.

But MacKenzie, who, with Chamberlain, produces the national homeless figures, is concerned about just how much of the new stock will wind up with the homeless.

An associate professor at Swinburne University, he says the 2020 goal is possible and realistic but the "devil is in the detail", and fears there is no clear strategic plan being developed under the Council of Australian Governments to deliver the programs.

"There are a lot of new people coming into the area, it's a new game for Canberra, there's a lot of goodwill, " he says.

"But once you set objectives you have to tailor the programs really carefully."

The new stock, while good news for the poor, may not solve the problem, he says. "It is possible that you could reduce the housing crisis but see very little effect on the homeless population itself."

FOR those working in the field, one of the most pressing issues is to develop diverse styles of accommodation suitable for the 75 per cent of single homeless people who often need extensive support services. There is a lot of new thinking in this area and a recognition that shelter without support is not enough.

Sue Crafter, the director of Common Ground Adelaide, which is pursuing one of the more radical approaches, says: "I don't think it has been a seismic shift yet but there is a growing understanding of the need for support and housing."

The Common Ground concept, pioneered in New York offers quality, well-located accommodation with on-site support and case management for tenants, who must pay rent.

The projects -- eight of which are now being set up across Australia -- work on the basis that homeless people should not be stigmatised but be given the opportunity to be part of a functioning community. Half the rooms in each project are rented not to the homeless but to tenants who earn less than $30,000 a year.

The model has attracted a lot of political attention: Therese Rein, the Prime Minister's wife, is the national patron of Common Ground. Crafter argues its programs can transform people's lives. "When they move in they often are euphoric, but they need support," she says. "The euphoria only lasts so long but if you can use the energy to help people work to a deeper transformation [it can work]."

She says this can be about something as simple as helping people attend a course, or getting tenants involved in tasks such as taking out the garbage.

It is inspiring, but some such as Eldridge worry it will crowd out other approaches.

"What worries me is that we might get caught up with fads and become committed to overseas solutions when what Australia needs to do is create its own solutions, " he says. "Common Ground has been a great program in the US and we should try it here but it is not a universal solution to homelessness in Australia.

"It's one option in a toolbox of solutions. It is not cheap and the danger is that it could become institutionalised. If you are going to reduce homelessness by half, on some of the costings on some models at the moment, you have no chance of achieving that."

Eldridge says that more creative thinking will be needed from providers such as the Salvation Army if the 50 per cent cut is to be achieved. Single men aged 25-45 who are chronically homeless are the biggest challenge, because most have mental health problems that make it hard for them to live in the housing on offer.

Eldridge says money spent on mental health care must be focused on these people in a co-ordinated approach.

The Salvation Army is considering radical options to meet the crisis. Eldridge cites the example of Melbourne, where the cheap boarding houses once used by single men have disappeared, replaced by more expensive and often sub-standard housing.

"We have not seen ourselves in the past as housing developers but maybe we are wondering whether we should have a look at this [and buy up stock for low-income tenants]."

MACKENZIE says he will be astounded if there is any reduction in the homeless numbers when he and Chamberlain set out to do their next five-year count next year. "There is nothing that they have done since 2006 [when the last count was done] that suggests homelessness will be coming down by then," he says. "If we continue to go down this track and sharpen up [delivery] between 2011 and 2016 we should see something happening. We will know then if we are tracking [to the 2020 goal]."