Homelessness Taskforce 99

The Homelessness Taskforce 99 is a multi-charity taskforce comprising representatives from all the major Brisbane charities which set out to find how many homeless people there are in Brisbane, how many are male and how many are female, and what age groups they fall into.

This information will enable the charities, the State Government, and the Brisbane City Council to plan more accurately and meaningfully the best ways to assist homeless people.

However, although the short term goal of the Taskforce is to measure the extent of the problem in order to establish better ways of assisting the homeless, its long term objective is to discover processes and procedures which can be implemented to prevent people becoming homeless in the first place.

The stereotypical homeless person is no longer a 40s+ male carrying a bottle of cheap plonk under his arm. Today it is more likely be a person of either sex, under 25, and perhaps suffering a mental illness or from substance abuse.

They sleep in homeless persons’ hostels, squats, seedy boarding houses, or rough (eg park benches, bus shelters, train stations, under bridges, in caves, etc)

Of course, homelessness is one of the hidden faces of poverty. Governments haven’t the slightest idea what to do about the problem. Leave it to the charities, they can fix it.

Do you think this is a cynical view? Well go and have a look for yourself.

In many ways the birth of Homelessness Taskforce 99 happened by chance.

When the new president of the Society of St Vincent de Paul took office in 1997, he decided that his first task should be to travel around Queensland to meet as many staff and volunteers as possible, and see the problems facing them first hand.

However, every time he spoke to the media, from Cairns to the Gold Coast, he was asked how many homeless people there were in their particular area.

He soon discovered that unfortunately there were no statistics of homeless people for Queensland, or indeed for most parts of Australia.

Clearly this was unsatisfactory, not only for all the charities but also from the point of view of the State, Federal, and Local Governments, none of which could plan any meaningful assistance to a group for whom no statistics existed.

There was anecdotal evidence that the number of homeless people in Brisbane is increasing. What was known is that the average homeless person is now substantially younger than in the past. Also there is a much higher proportion of females than ever before, and a great shortage of female beds in hostels for the homeless.

So the Society of St Vincent de Paul decided to take the initiative and bring all the stakeholders together with a view to gaining a reasonably close estimate of the number of homeless people in Brisbane.

With this in mind it wrote to all the charities in Brisbane, and the State and Local Government, inviting them to meet at the Society’s HQ in Spring Hill in February. The response was overwhelming, with all major Brisbane charities and several State Government and Brisbane City Council representatives attending. The meeting was addressed by the Minister for Families, Youth and Community Care, Anna Bligh, and from it Homelessness Taskforce 99 was born.

Subsequently a Steering Committee was formed and successfully applied for funds ($25,000) from the State Government to actually count the number of homeless people within about a 3 km radius of the GPO (ie. the CBD, Fortitude Valley, Milton, New Farm, Spring Hill, West End, Woolloongabba, South Brisbane, Kangaroo Point) and publish a report of the findings.

Such a task was ambitious, and has never been attempted before, and was intended to provide invaluable statistical information regarding the number, gender and age of homeless people in the inner Brisbane area.

However, it came to fruition on Monday 29 November at 7 pm when 130 volunteers from the various charities, plus students, nuns and members of the public, ranging in age from 15 to 75 assembled at the nerve centre at Wesley Mission in Ann Street. They were given torches, mobile phones, pens, questionnaires, and last minute instructions, before being despatched in teams to their particular counting areas.

An important aspect of the project was the consultation with homeless people. They helped to develop the census questionnaire and the graphic artwork which was used to publicise the project to the homeless community. Shortly after the census, the initial findings were communicated to the homeless community through a postcard which was distributed through agencies working with the homeless population

The census found that there were at least 336 homeless people living in inner city Brisbane. 336 is obviously a bottom line figure. We are aware that many people who were homeless were not surveyed. We know that there are people in squats and difficult to find places. Homeless people have told us that they search for hidden places so as not to be easily moved on. And, of course, we are not able to count people moving from house to house or staying with friends because they have no place of their own.

The census also highlighted the shortage of accommodation for people in crisis, particularly women. Although there are more than 300 beds for men requiring crisis accommodation in Brisbane, there are only 14 beds for women.

Other findings of the census include:

• 85% of those counted in the census were male and 14.7% female
• Approximately half of those surveyed were staying in emergency accommodation
• 152 respondents were sleeping out in a wide variety of locations with parks, streets and squats being the most common
• One third of those surveyed were under 25, with more of those on the streets than in emergency accommodation

Brisbane should be ashamed of the number of homeless people in our inner city. If there is just one person out there who is forced to be homeless because there are not shelters available to them, it’s a shame on our city.