Housing can be a matter of life and death

Toby Hall

August 31, 2011

Opinion

Comments 24

Providing housing for those living rough is a matter of life and death. Photo: Ben Rushton

Like most Australians, I was horrified to read about the violent death of a homeless man on a train between Sydney and Newcastle last week.

That such a vulnerable person – a 76-year-old – was preyed upon while seeking the basic human needs of shelter and warmth is just heartbreaking.

His death came just days after a violent assault on another homeless man, this time in Sydney, who was left alone without medical care for 16 hours before being found and rushed to hospital*.

These brutal acts against homeless people are shocking and tragic, but sadly they reflect the reality of sleeping rough in our cities.

Violence against homeless people is not unusual and most of the time goes unreported to authorities.

Disturbingly, Mission Australia and other homeless agencies active in Sydney's inner city have noticed a worrying trend in the number of deaths among rough sleepers and other homeless people – particularly in recent months.

According to information shared informally between ourselves and other agencies, we estimate that about 10 homeless people died in June and July in Sydney's inner city alone.

In the past 12 months, at least 16 homeless people have died while another seven formerly homeless people have also passed away.

Professionals who've worked for years at the coalface of homelessness tell me that they have never seen this number of deaths in such a short space of time.

The causes of death have largely been a result of chronic disease and drug and alcohol abuse, while others were caused by assault, suicide or accidents.

If this was another subset of the population you would have to wonder if this number of deaths would go unnoticed. But because homeless people are often disconnected from family and community networks who might speak up for them it's easy for a trend like this to slip under the radar.

There's also no particular reason the different agencies can give for the apparent spike – it unfortunately seems to reflect what it is to be homeless in Australia in 2011.

You might say, "But if a person dies of a chronic illness or overdose, how can you say they've died through homelessness?"

One of the most significant impacts of homelessness — particularly if you're sleeping rough – is on your health.

In fact, people who have been homeless experience much higher levels of illness because of a lack of adequate shelter, unsanitary living conditions, and eating badly. They also age prematurely.

The illnesses and chronic diseases caused by homelessness and which can lead to death is absolutely what we're seeing here.

Similarly, in terms of death through overdose, helping homeless people beat their addictions is one of the crucial supports they need access to.

If you're a roughsleeper, out there on your own, using, with no access to help, then absolutely your homelessness is a contributing factor to your situation.

Sleeping on the street is a debilitating, isolating and extremely dangerous existence.

A person sleeping rough faces a day-to-day slog just to stay alive: to ward off the cold, find a safe place for shelter and avoid the constant threat of violence.

It's a never-ending struggle that exhausts a person and drains them of energy.

The only way we can prevent violent attacks and the premature deaths of homeless people is to break the cycle of homelessness and get them into housing.

It's not rocket science.

Governments – state and federal – have, on the whole, responded to the challenge in recent years by investing billions in a national homelessness strategy; to meet targets to halve the number of homeless people and create enough beds to provide all rough-sleepers with accommodation by 2020.

But getting that money out of the pipeline and onto the ground can't come soon enough.

It's literally a matter of life and death.

* The homeless man bashed and left for 16 hours died yesterday in St Vincent's hospital.

Toby Hall is chief executive of Mission Australia.

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24 comments

It is unfortunate to see how much money and support we devote to supposed Refugee's arriving to this country and we can't support our own homeless first. We give these "Refugee's" shelter, food, safety, huge medical support, internet access and wide screen T.V's, while 200,000 Australians are on the street each night. Methinks we should actually divert a few resources away from wrapping the "Refugee's" in cotton wool, to a better cause. We can't help everyone in this world, maybe we should at least start with our own!

Commenter

JR

Location

Sydney

Date and time

September 01, 2011, 8:57AM
well said JR - exactly what we need - more mean spiritedness.

Commenter

Darren

Location

Freshwater

Date and time

September 01, 2011, 9:33AM
I think that government needs to solve problems with housing prices going up every year. The reason we have so many homeless ppl now is because even everage working person can't afford to rent place by themselves. Sydney is the one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in. There has to be some kind of regulation put in place where rent prices corerspond with everage community earnings. Its out of control

Commenter

Katunchik

Location

Sydney

Date and time

September 01, 2011, 9:49AM
I have a brother who no fault of his own, through an industrial accident, ended up losing everything and ended up on the streets.
He was too proud to ask the rest of the family for help and struggled to make ends meet.
He stayed in boarding houses in the inner city that became more and more expensive as they were sold off in the inner city property boom and some greedy landlords upped the rent as demand became greater than supply. Even with rent assistance from Centrelink it became too expensive. Unable to find work due to his industrial accident, he turned to alcohol to escape the tedium and numb his resultant depression and fell down the slippery slope into alcohol addiction.
The good news is that with the help of organisations such as Mission Australia and the rest of my family he is now back on his feet.
I joined Mission Australia as a volunteer (my multinational employee gives me one day a week off for volunteering) and in talking to my brother and staff/volunteers/clients at Mission Australia have gained a deeper understanding of how we are all one incident away from ending up losing everything and perhaps ending up on the streets ourselves.
Have a closer look when you pass a homeless man, woman or teenager and you'll see somebody like yourself who either made either one bad life choice or ended up there through no fault of their own. They may even be a relative of somebody you know.

Commenter

Have seen it myself

Location

Sydney

Date and time

September 01, 2011, 10:11AM
Mr Hall doesn't make it clear what he means by 'housing'. Does he mean simply a bed for the night, which is what the last few paragraphs sound like, or does he mean it in the usual sense of a permanent abode? From all I've read, a certain proportion of the homeless have no desire for their own home. Some are too mentally ill to play the part of happy householder, others are simply wanderers by nature. Some of the homeless on the street won't even go into shelters. I don't think Mr Hall will achieve his dream of getting everybody off the streets, but I do agree that there should be a lot more emergency/temporary accommodation available so those people who do want a safe bed can find one easily.
I agree with grimotr that the government should be doing more to reclaim unused buildings. There are supposedly 200,000 empty buildings in Sydney - so much for the housing shortage we keep hearing about! Look at all the empty shops on Parramatta rd and other busy streets. Online shopping means those shops are never going to be fully occupied again. They should be converted to accommodation.
@D, it wouldn't surprise me if the true unemployment rate (as in working enough to earn a living wage) is actually 10% or more. The definition of 'employed' is only one hour a week - try paying rent on that!

Commenter

photondancer

Date and time

September 01, 2011, 10:27AM
@Matt "Unfortunately western society doesn't really care enough about its people to actually look after them all properly"
Unfortunately, this is not true. As a volunteer working in this field I see homeless people from the Chinese, Indian and other non Western communities.
Some non Western communities are grossly ashamed of having a relative who does not "fit in " and want nothing to do with them.
It is a case of educating ALL sections of our community

Commenter

Have seen it myself

Location

Sydney

Date and time

September 01, 2011, 10:46AM
Sorry, there's no money left to look after Australia's homeless people - as it's all being spent by Gillard & Brown on catering to refugees and boat arrivals. After all, they're much more important in Gillard's & the Greens scheme of things.

Commenter

more refugees please

Location

melbourne

Date and time

September 01, 2011, 10:59AM
Like America, people in Australia have been asking to be taxed less and less and governments have, in the past, pandered to this, cutting back services to tax less and hence hopefully be re-elected.
Why is it, people expect more services for ourselves and others but come down hard on governments who may wish to tax slightly more to provide more services to the community.
We obviously need more mental health resources and publically subsidised housing but will we agree to be taxed another 1% to provide a better standard of living? I wouldn't disagree but the majority would.
Countries like Sweden and Norway who look after their disadvantaged far better than us and give more in foreign aid, tax their citizens more, which I think is the correct moral approach.
When will we change our thinking? I think it needs a cultural change. I've no idea how we can achieve this? Anybody else have any ideas?

Commenter

Have seen it myself

Location

Sydney

Date and time

September 01, 2011, 11:44AM
I can't get over the old man being bashed to death on the train. There he is as clear as day in the CCTV footage, pacing back and forth on the platform to keep warm. I catch the Newcastle train all the time. Absolutely horrific.

Commenter

Kate

Date and time

September 01, 2011, 12:06PM
Several years ago, I was in Sydney for a weekend course and stayed at a budget hotel in Park Street (or is it Park Avenue?). Nothing in the area was open early Sunday morning except the McDonalds across the way. I climbed the stairs, ordered and sat down. It was so quiet - and then it hit me. The store was filled with a large number of men, and I think some women too, just sitting and staring into space. Some had a cup of coffee on their table but I didn't see any food. They were shabbily dressed and obviously fell under the category of homeless. Why were they there? It was freezing cold outside and the store was warm. I had to lift a paper to my face to hide the tears - what sort of country treats its own people in this way, I thought. Some of those critical of these Australians should take the time to walk in their footsteps - it will change their minds. It certainly changed mine.

Commenter

John

Date and time

September 01, 2011, 5:34PM