Our Projects update

Who are Sydney Homeless?
Sydney Homeless are Rough Sleepers living in the City of Sydney municipal area.Our mission  is to devise provide or act towards an end to social and economic marginalisation in locally regionally and nationally. We currently do not work with any other organisations or government bodies believing that their current aims objectives and strategies do not seek to end marginalisation, but focus on using marginalised people as tokens to transfer taxpayers funds to their own purposes.


What do Sydney Homeless stand for?
 We stand for ending the drivers which cause economic social and housing marginalisation.
We oppose current Government Homeless Plans as they are exploitative of both marginalised people and taxpayers.They outlay huge amounts of taxpayers money to sustain a ten year plan which will at best result in a further call for yet more tax money to continue what amounts to a band aid "shut the gate after the horse has bolted solution".We consider it a federal government duty to consult directly with the marginalised communities via a process conducted in an environment and on terms conducive to marginalised communities having direct input into a genuinely consultative process; as a preliminary to further consultation with other tiers of government and the business community to arrive at a strategy to implement sustainability in the appropriate supply and management of sufficient appropriately located affordable housing. 


How are Sydney Homeless Funded? 
@SydneyHomeless do not solicit or accept funding donations. We facilitate the direct donation of goods to our constituent community. We offer online promotional & service management to businesses and organisations and signage support to businesses in the Greater Sydney area,supporting ourselves and a growing number of our Sydney Homeless community in this way. 


Need workers in Sydney? A growing number of businesses in the Sydney area are recognising the efficiencies and convenience of being able to contact us often at short notice for one or a team of workers. Our workers are available 24 hours a Day including weekends and have experience in stores, logistics furniture removals, cleaning and construction work. We do not charge recruitment fees and our role is to find work for people who need it. As well as Aussies we have Vietnamese, Bengali and Mandarin and Korean speakers available.


Street Distribution
  Sydney Homeless Street distribution is ongoing providing the opportunity for donors to give direct to the Rough Sleepers and Housed Marginalised with the greatest need. This winter we have been able to distribute over 600 sleeping bags as well as ad hoc bedding to rough sleepers,thanks to the continued support of our donor base, who often receive small thanks for their unselfish efforts.Unlike the Charity sector, our donors do not enjoy the benefit of tax deductibility on their generous donations and efforts.They do however take comfort from knowing that their is no taxation of their goodwill.100% of what they give goes to the people who need it most- not into the bottom line of some multimillion dollar a year Not for Profit or to offset the budget people are told governments and their attendant bevy of NGOs get in tax dollars to fund services to homeless people.We and our homeless and marginalised community thank our donors very much.


Short Term Accommodation:
 By leveraging informal relationships with accommodation providers we have (just) been able to meet a steady unrequited demand for "off the radar" family emergency accommodation.  These short term arrangements have been made available to over 180 family groups since December. Its a study in government incompetence that State or Federal Governments don't make formal arrangements to leverage these often vacant business resources, offering the operators a tax deduction. This would vastly and immediately improve government agencies access to just in time affordable and appropriately hygienic accommodation at little dollar cost to taxpayers while providing a useful tax offset to businesses in return for donating their excess capacity.We know Housing NSW pays premium rates for slums which should be condemned.Bureaucrats and their advisors on huge taxpayer funded salaries simply wait for people like us to connect the dots for them for free, so they can use our ideas to justify their next salary increase.If thats the case peepz,we've connected the dots..get off your fat arses and Go for it.


Our community and beyond zero environmental initiative


 Our Youth Wing are a self managed group of teens who are working towards reintegration into their natural communities while pursuing their studies.We can't say too much about them for their own protection, but it would be remiss of us to not thank the slowly growing but extremely supportive business people without whose support this project would not be possible. 23 of our Youth Wing will be completing their Year 12 studies this term.We are very proud of the manner and dignity with which all youth wing conduct themselves under trying circumstances.


   

Fair Pay for Sustainable Living: The Superannuation Ripoff

The major drivers of marginalisation in Neo Conservative Capitalist Australia are legislated constraints of workers rights to assert for fair pay and the unregulated freedom given to a few greedy directors to rob the population blind. While businesses can and do charge extortionate prices for their increasingly shoddy services, workers are barred by legislation from using any effective methods of lobbying for fair pay,ensuring that they have access to their fair share of the nations wealth.These unequal policies and law combinations have the bipartisan support of the Liberal National Coalition and The Australian Labor Party (or at least its current dominant ultra right wing). 

The Superannuation Trade-off Debacle

 Since the Hawke years, Australian Liberal-National and Labor Governments have foisted the furphy of Superannuation on a gullible workforce as an alternate to Fair Wage increases.The following Keating,Howard Rudd and Gillard administrations have all succumbed to the ease of control Superannuation provides over workers (but not politicians) Superannuation.

Trade Union advocacy for and involvement in the administration of "Workers Super Funds" has shifted Union leadership interests from serving the needs of workers to working collusively with capital. This formula has had the effect of channelling workers compulsory savings into the control of a few neo conservative capitalists who enjoy unfettered access to an ever increasing revenue stream of workers funds - to use as they wish.The entirely predictable result is that workers capital is actually used against their own personal and familial interests, driven in part by the need of Super Fund managers to show returns consistently higher than other forms of investment. The problem is, those largely wholesale borrowers of those super based funds MUST drive even higher returns for their shareholders. With residential property a leading commodity, values inevitably will rise, driven not by the demand of residents alone, but by speculating investors, who want to maximise their return on investment while minimising their outgoings. And thats the point at which the superannuation dog comes back to bite the superannuant squarely on the posterior. The superannuants money, under the control of greedy financial manipulators, has become a mere figure on the excel sheet whose aim is solely to maximise profits-for the borrowing capitalist. The worker has as little effective control of their superannuation as they have over the so called democratically elected governments who govern not for,but over them.

What, you ask,does this have to do with homelessness?? I say it has everything to do with Homelessness- it is among the three core drivers of homelessness and social marginalisation. Superannuation is the government decreed tool which forces you to trade off your right to a Fair Wage now - for an insubstantial "nest-egg" when you're just about dead. Superannuation forces all workers,except politicians, to give over this "savings" to capitalist exploiters-effectively 5 international companies- to control.Several of our homeless and marginalised would NOT be in such dire circumstances if they could access this bounty which a few wealthy financiers get to use as play money in the casino they call the financial markets. And this money comes back to bite your arse with very sharp teeth every time you try to take another step up the financial ladder.Crippling bank practices and rampant fees.The Gillard Rudd Governments sop to the publics outrage at these practices was to regulate brokers but not the financial institutions themselves.


  Workers need this income in their pockets now.Just to keep pace with the cravings of capitalism which under the mastery of a few seeks to gobble and consume all in its path in the name of driving annually focussed profit.

Homeless call for Smart Political Solutions

  As Australia goes to the 2010 Federal Election , the taxpayer is burdened with " The Road Home " $600million plus over ten years -and repayment of $6billion in economic stimulus funding. A substantial percentage (over $2 billion) of this considerable expenditure of your taxpayer funds has gone and will continue to go to bureaucracies and infrastructure within various areas of government and its NGO or NFP partners. Since launching The Road Home to much fanfare in 2009 as fulfilment of Labors 2007 election commitment the Federal government has been presented with compelling evidence that their stated strategic aims (if they were ever about reducing homelessness) are not working. Even on the basis of their statistics (which we believe hopelessly understate the problem),the numbers of homeless people have increased dramatically - in Sydney and, by all accounts, across Australia.


 Despite an expensive cynical band-aid dressing of the visible homeless "problem" in the leadup to Australia's federal elections neither the Federal Labor Government nor their State counterpart have permanent affordable acceptable accomodation solutions for many of Sydney Citys rough sleepers, including myself. The style of case-managed "housing" delivery on offer is a staged process conditional on engagement with organisations whose role is to collect information on clients.Or to put it bluntly,they are spies.We value our privacy and independence,in many cases more than we value having a home. We emphatically do not need our privacy invaded. Another common issue is that of broken trust- Housing NSW and government in general along with their NGO service providers use housing as a bait in their quest to gather information.When they get all the information they want they offer a completely inadequate accommodation alternative-knowing it to be unacceptable-on a take it or go to the back of the queue basis.None are known to have been offered housing in the city, aside from mental health patients.


 I could but won't go on about the issues.Government and NGOs are well aware of the shortcomings which they have purposely put in place to ensure that there is no solution to homelessness and preferably that nobody looks in the appropriate direction to identify appropriate solutions.Why? Continuance of funding,courtesy of you,the Australian Taxpayer, to continuously provide band aid quick fixes which virtually guarantee a continuance of the problem.


 This blog is about solutions to homelessness.
The major driver of homelessness is affordability at location.There are two principal focal areas at the intersection of which is growing homelessness.

• The first and major cause is unregulated and collusive marketing driven valuation of rental (and property purchase) rates.Regulation is needed to set maximum market rentals,based on configuration.
• The second is the failure of local,state and federal governments to ensure that housing stocks available match the labour demand and sector affordability by postcode.
• The third is restrictive regulation of the workforces ability to negotiate meaningful wage outcomes prioritising the interests of bankers and employers.While these conditions are allowed to prevail, look forward to steady growth in homeless numbers. 

 Our intention is to identify solutions for the Sydney City Municipal area.We hope that these solutions identify parallels in other municipalities.


 Sydney City has sufficient accommodation already to house all who live work and live homelessly in this urbanity.The barriers are affordability and designation.Much of the municipalitys residential accommodation is in the form of "Serviced Apartments" , Hotel and Traveller accommodation services.A levy of 4% of available accommodation units in each complex,whether hotels serviced apartments or other accommodation, should be made available for social housing use.These proprietors are hogging an essential commodity in a City which does not have unlimited land to build on.A progressive "phase in" period of 2 to four years may be necessary to accommodate the business projections of affected businesses.

• Develop an accommodation index per postcode.Identify actual incomes and use an accommodation cost of 30% of income to arrive at Accommodation Pricing.
• All New developments including must contribute 4% of their worth to a social housing pool administered by Council,not State.If the development has a residential component then that social accommodation must be taken from that complex.Social Housing allocation offset purchases(for non residential development)must be in the same postcode.
• Transient Workforce Accommodation. Many workers today have skills or work in industries which have short term project life and require constant relocation. Transient workers might consider it preferable and more economical to live in mobile homes, as compared with traditional housing.This scheme would most effectively be implemented via Centrelink and involve a "buyout" of the persons Centrelink and Housing entitlements for a number of years. 
• Housing Authorities should consider keeping storage facilities for tenants who wish to travel for extended periods (such as aged pensioners) 

 The common thread with these proposals is that none require repetitive taxpayer funding. All except Transient Workforce Accommodation require no taxpayer funding at all and obligate municipalities to plan appropriately and sustainably for growth. 

Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan

Featuring:

Bob Carr, Former Premier NSW
Malcolm Turnbull, Federal MP
Matthew Wright, Executive Director Beyond Zero Emissions
Allan Jones, City of Sydney

MC - Quentin Dempster, journalist and broadcaster

Free Entry

You are invited to attend the Sydney launch of the Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan.

This cutting-edge plan, the culmination of over 12 months and thousands of hours of pro bono work by engineers, scientists and postgraduate students, is a collaboration between the climate solutions think tank Beyond Zero Emissions, and the University of Melbourne Energy Institute.

This plan is unique in Australia. It is a detailed and costed blueprint for transitioning our stationary energy sector to 100% renewable energy in ten years. The technologies utilised in this plan are commercially available now.

This free public event will cover the details of the plan as well as the state of renewable energy in Australia more broadly. A panel discussion with technical experts will follow the presentations.

Don't miss out!

If you would like to take a look at the report or synopsis they are available here:
Synopsis 16 pages:
http://media.beyondzeroemissions.org/ZCA2020_Stationary_Energy_Synopsis_v1.pdf


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A clean green and heathy path to economic self determination for Sydneys Homeless and at risk of homelessness communities. Check out what they do The Cycle Rescue Blog .