Bundaberg Community Lifestyle Support worker Jodi Morris on homeless crisis

As the Covid-19 pandemic adds another layer of pain for the homeless, Bundaberg community support worker Jodi Morris has revealed shocking stats that show the rate of homelessness isn’t getting better in the region - it’s getting much, much worse.

Bundaberg community workers Gail Mole and Jodi Morris capaigned last year for backpack beds for the homeless.

Queensland may very well be suffering from two pandemics. One is Covid-19, the other is much easier to ignore.

Bundaberg Community Lifestyle Support’s Jodi Morris has been at the forefront of homelessness research in the region and says Bundaberg is no exception in a statewide increase in homelessness of 17 per cent on last year.

“It’s an astronomical increase,” she said.

For perspective, the 2018-19 increase was nine per cent.

It comes as the Covid-19 pandemic causes a breakdown in certain services such as mobile showers. It’s just too hard to manage the stringent rules around Covid safety.

As Ms Morris says, many homeless people don’t even have mobile phones to check-in at facilities.

Ms Morris says it’s often the people at the grassroots level who are doing the most.

“All I see is it’s generally your everyday people,” she said.

“It’s your down-to-earth real Australian mates helping mates.

“If us plain Jane people can get out and make a difference then surely people at the top can.”

Last year, Ms Morris raised $12,000 to help homeless people in the region and helped spearhead a drive for portable sleeping bags for those with no shelter at night.

“Ninety-five per cent of people are not homeless because they want to be,” she said.

Ms Morris described it as a “horrible situation” where many people were being offered rooms for rent at grossly inflated rates because of people cashing in on the housing shortage.

She said some rooms were being advertised for hundreds of dollars per week just because people knew others were desperate.

“There are some people who will just take advantage,” she said.

“It’s not fair, it’s not nice.”

Ms Morris said she’d love to see land set aside for homeless people to have somewhere to go until a bigger resolution can come to fruition.

Data released by Member for Burnett Stephen Bennett as part of Homelessness Month in August, revealed there had been more than 26,000 applications for the social housing waiting list in the state.

Of that number, 16,270 applications were classified as “very high need”.

Echoing Ms Morris’s research, the numbers show in just over 12 months, the number of people classed as “very high need” jumped from 8900 to 16,270.

Homelessness in the region is being compounded by a number of factors including an overall housing shortage and migration from bigger cities in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Originally published as Bundaberg Community Lifestyle Support worker Jodi Morris on homeless crisis