You may have seen an article in The Guardian recently that discussed the ‘eviction’ of a young couple from a tent in a park in Brisbane. According to the article, the couple lost a lot of their possessions when Police, ‘pink shirted’ Queensland housing authority and Brisbane City Council workers moved in and issued ‘move on directives’ to occupants of five tents in Orleigh Park, West End. One of the possessions taken was a memory box containing items that belonged to their 8 year old child – who died in hospital the same day as the eviction occurred.
Brisbane City Council staff returned the memory box to the couple a few days later. The rest of their possessions were destroyed. However the only housing support offered to the couple was on the basis that they would have to separate. The Guardian reported
According to a report produced for Qcoss and other services this year, a large part of council homelessness referral teams’ work is responding to requests from the public to enforce move-along orders.
“The hardest part, I think, of our job is we get incoming correspondence from residents [that are] equal part get rid of the homeless and equal part can you do more for the homeless?” the report quotes one council employee as saying.
Councils have responded by treating the problem as a security issue. Brisbane city council turned off the power and barbecues in Musgrave [Park] in October, citing an “escalation of violence and antisocial behaviour in these encampments”. It was perceived by many as an attempt to make the place inhospitable. Moreton Bay council [just north of Brisbane City] recently banned homeless people from keeping pets or sleeping in vans.
Apparently there are 47,820 people waiting on the Queensland social housing wait list. The average wait is two and a half years. It’s also reasonable to assume that other states have similar delays in finding suitable accommodation for the homeless. The tragedy is it takes something like this to convince a reporter to write the story in the first place.
Most homeless people don’t choose to be homeless. While some of their past life decisions may not have been conducive to having enough to pay the rent, the power and the water bills as they arrived, people deserve a roof over their heads in a country as wealthy as Australia. And while some obviously are concerned enough to ring Councils and Police asking for more to be done to help the homeless, apparently there are also those that don’t want their ‘million dollar views’ sullied by the homeless living in tents in the park over the road.
There is a Facebook meme going around at the moment highlighting the ‘reason for the season’ is the commemoration of the arrival on this planet of an undocumented immigrant of middle east ethnicity who was homeless and had brown skin. He certainly didn’t accept the status quo if the bible stories are to be believed. By comparison the behaviour of a lot of people at this time of the year who preach ‘peace and goodwill to all’ and also support the deportation of people who ‘don’t look like them’ or the ‘moving on’ of people from parks and so on is odious.
Surely, if there was a reason for this season, it’s to remind us that for a lot of reasons there are people that are far worse off than we are. While seeing family, friends and religious observance (if that’s in your belief system) are important surely we as a society need to work harder if the indicators suggest that 47,820 people are looking for a permanent roof over their head in Queensland alone. This may mean that there are better uses for the funding that could theoretically buy votes through delivering tax cuts or providing other trinkets that politicians seem to love when they are trying to appeal to sections of the community.
There would be alternative solutions to people having to live in parks in some of the most developed cities in the world if the political will was there. We seem to be able to justify weapons that could destroy the world many times over in a heartbeat. The political will is generated when enough people contact their local representatives and make it an issue. It may mean that the money is diverted from the shiny new armoured vehicles or submarines, or it may come from increasing the cost of services and charges provided by government in general.
Either way, as you are celebrating the end of 2024 and hoping for a good 2025 in the manner you see fit, let’s hope that those looking for a permanent roof over their head have a happy new year.
Also by 2353: Dutton’s Double Standards
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Thank you for writing this salient and poignant article that is a shameful indictment on both the federal and state mismanagement of our homeless brethren. You highlight the abject cruelty of enforced bureaucracy writ large. Really, the homeless should be billeted in the council chambers,largely disused after hours,until the council finds other suitable interim housing.
Cruelty is a deliberate feature of the system, not a bug. And yes, by “system”, I mean capitalism.
How people expected housing availability to keep up with the constant population increase is rediculous. We average 300,000 births per year and encourage people to breed even more trough baby bonus payments and subsidies for almost every aspect of raising and educating a child imaginable. There was always going to be a time when saturation point was reached and properties would become increasingly more expensive and demand would far outstrip supply. Expecting the government to meet all future housing needs is completely contrary to our socio-political system and structure. We are a capitalist democratic nation, not a communist or socialist state. Instead of providing housing for an exponentially increasing population with no signs f slowing down, we need to reduce the population and control ongoing growth.