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.