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Under the Southern Cross

20/4/2018

6 Comments

 
Picture
By Geoff Ellis
 
A LATE afternoon temperature drop presaged sunset as trickles of people meandered toward the Harold Hughes Reserve. On the edge of darkness the Corinella community gathered around the rotunda to share the hurt that comes from the loss of a loved one. In memory of Bert, dozens of people lit candles as the voice of a lone singer carried our thoughts toward the Southern Cross.

Overwhelmed by circumstance, Bert had been rendered homeless a few weeks earlier. She had places to go but she didn't know how to get there or how to ask the people offering a helping hand along the way. She went for a long walk that ended amidst the trees she loved so much.
 
Across Australia more than 105,237 people were homeless that night. We know the number because they were counted on Census night 18 months ago. The Bureau of Statistics doesn’t give any of those 105,237 homeless people a face. Bert does.
 
Late last year, when the local branch of the Australian Unemployed Workers met in Corinella, the topic was robo-debt, Centrelink compliance and life on the edge of the abyss. We looked at numbers like the aforementioned. Another number getting larger is women over 50 sleeping in cars. We also talked about the food bank at the Neighbourhood House and other agencies of support.
 
Bert didn’t attend our meeting. Although she lived by herself she was certainly not alone in her circumstances. There are now more renters than ever and the over 55 age group is the fastest growing sector of the market. In Victoria more than a third of people now live in rented accommodation. That figure is rising. The cost of rental property is outstripping increases in wages and payments.
 
That Census also noted a continuing fall in the proportion of Australian households in social housing. From 7 per cent in 1991 the proportion has dropped to 4.2 per cent. That marks the lowest proportion of households in social housing in the past 35 years.
 
There are currently over 40,000 people on the waiting list for public housing in Victoria. That doesn’t include everyone in the market struggling to find the rent as power prices rise and paid hours are reduced. It doesn’t include all of the increasing number of adults who have to live with their parents to keep a roof over all their heads. Over a million households are now paying housing costs that exceed the affordability benchmark of 30 per cent of household income. Many of these people won't apply for public housing as the waiting list deters them. 
 
Like Bert, those 105,237 people with nowhere to go tonight all had homes once.
 
Jan Berriman, chief of the YMCA, recently stated that last year her organisation could only accept one sixth of the women in need of accommodation who requested help from her organisation. Ms Berriman cited marriage breakdown, lower paying jobs, caring duties and a lack of superannuation as some of the reasons that women suddenly find themselves in the rental market, the social sector and at the mercy of Centrelink.
 
At some stage we all need to accept, or offer, a helping hand. There has only been a minimal increase in resources since then prime minister  Kevin Rudd briefly focused government’s attention on homelessness. There has been little capital investment in this sector in the intervening decade. Homelessness Australia has reported that the nation is losing the war against what Mr Rudd referred to as a "national obscenity". 
Increased funding for crisis accommodation, affordable and social housing needs to become an imperative for state and federal treasurers. It’s hard to see merit in investment in tourist car ferries when people are trying to survive in nearby foreshore reserves. The Miners Rest Motel in Wonthaggi, the only crisis accommodation in Bass Coast and South Gippsland, is slated for redevelopment – into a petrol station.
 
The evening after those kind and sombre words were said in memory of Bert, a flare shot from the end of the Corinella Pier, lighting up Western Port. A community art project, The Edge of Us, bought the Waterline communities together under the Southern Cross. The candles that flicker in memory of Bert also bring us together. Rest in peace.
 
The International Organisation for Homelessness defines four categories of homelessness.
  • Rooflessness - without a shelter of any kind, sleeping rough.
  • Houselessness - with a place to sleep temporarily.
  • Living in insecure housing - threatened with severe exclusion due to insecure tenancies.
  • Living in inadequate housing - in unfit housing or in extreme overcrowding.
6 Comments
Joy Button
20/4/2018 10:13:54 am

A beautifully written article Geoff and Bert's death has highlighted housing concerns for people living in our area. The service that night was very moving and highlighted homelessness and a lack of resources in Bass Coast. I do hope that some good comes out of this.

Reply
Mikhaela Barlow
20/4/2018 10:57:51 am

Your article brings some questions to mind Councillor.
1) does Council know, roughly, how many homeless people there are in Bass Coast?
2) what is Council intending to do about it? You mentioned the Miners’ Rest Motel redevelopment; does Council have a plan to help fund alternative emergency accomodation?

Reply
annie Brookes
22/4/2018 02:26:27 pm

Dear Geoff,
having you at Bertie's memorial was a such a wonderful thing to see, I felt from seeing you there that Bertie's plight was in good hands and voice would arise that could advocate on her behalf and thousands just like her. I have read that the number of women over the age of 55 that are homeless and living on the streets has dramatically risen in the last couple years and yes you are right in saying that not enough focus is on homelessness now since Kevin Rudd left. Interesting to note to that this prime minister was homeless himself at one point and lived with his mother and siblings in the family car. A thing that really cuts to the quick is the way landlords at eviction go about this process, chucking personal things out of the evictee which were about their life, their story and most of all possibly the only things that kept them going. Changes need to be made to some landlord policy and procedures as well. Emotions and feelings of what an evictee experience are humiliation, despair, failure, loneliness just to name a few...Bertie, while not with us now has touched everyone's hearts and hopefully has create many voices to rise up and see that this does not happen again

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Robyn Smith link
23/4/2018 02:59:16 pm

Well done Geoff, an informative and sensitive piece on a very hard subject, to mis-quote you, that has to be told. Bert's funeral was small and sad, the family wanted it to be private. The flowers placed in Bert's spot have all been brought together to the right spot now. You would like to think that some of the huge profit Andrew's government made selling off the Snowy River Hydro plant could go to rural emergency housing and other essential services, rather than to sporting venues in Melbourne.

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Lizzy Leahy
25/4/2018 08:59:24 pm

Thank you Geoff Ellis for taking the time to put into words what a lot of local people are feeling about the loss of Roberta. Even though we had not met, it feels so wrong for a member of our small community to pass away alone following a string of dire circumstances. I hope checks will be put in place to mitigate this happening again.
I would love to see Council approve a place of remembrance in the way of a seat or plaque in Roberta's memory also.

Reply
Meryl Tobin
22/5/2018 12:01:34 pm

I was very moved by Geoff Ellis’s poignant and well-documented article. He gave homelessness a face through Roberta, a local professional woman who faced hard times, and provided up-to-date figures for the numbers of homeless people in Australia and Victoria. How sad and how ironic that a helicopter could be provided to search for a missing woman yet not the resources to maybe save her from homelessness. Many of the homeless people I have met do not enjoy their lifestyle but want accommodation so they can resume normal lives and hopefully get a job and contribute to their society.

Congratulations Geoff and to the Corinella and District Community Centre and other people and groups in the local area who work to build a sense of community and to give people in need of a helping hand.

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