At about 10:45 a.m. today a council truck pulled in to the Martin Place homeless food site and illegally removed the property of a group of homeless people who have been camping on private property at the now vacant former Westpac site.
Personal possessions and bedding were unceremoniously dumped onto a council rubbish truck by grinning council workers (until the camera came out) despite protestations from bystanders.
The homeless camp was on private property on the recently vacated Westpac site which has been a homeless resource site since 1991.
Council workers stated that they had been ordered to remove the property by Mick Fish, a long standing City of Sydney council worker who masquerades as a homelessness worker-but a central figure in the theft of homeless peoples property by council over many years.
The City of Sydney"s failure to adequately plan for affordable housing is a major driver of homelessness in the city as well as surrounding urban areas. There is little effort by the city to ensure adequate housing for the many low paid or even middle income workers needed for the city and its businesses to function. Surrounding municipalities are treated by the city as its economic bantustans with workers forced to commute daily to and from their locally unsustainably paid jobs.
The State government and City of Sydney fail to manage the problem of homelessness with a "zero problem end game" as the target. Part of the desire by State government to forcibly amalgamate councils is to grab Botany-in-the-flightpath as the "affordable housing zone."
None of the NGO's Charities or Federal government agencies have a concrete plan to end homelessness-because they need homeless people as tokens to collect money for themselves with.
Meanwhile Lizzie Chris and the Martin Place campers will come back tonight to their property gone...stolen by a heartless City of Sydney
The Sydney Homeless Activist Community join Occupy Sydney and Anonymous in supporting building and endorsing the Sydney Homeless Day Out.
Sydney Homeless Day Out is a crowd sourced event which will at once be an opportunity for the Homeless and ex homeless communities to get together with free food clothing and resources while having a good time.
Donations of Food Meat Drinks and Resources are most welcome.
Musicians Comedy Acts and Speakers wishing to address the issues of homelessness with a focus on ending it are asked to contact sydneyhomeless@gmail.com
But there's more.
The Sydney Homeless Team are arranging an Ultimo Storage Facility for blankets and sleeping bags and a roster to make these available to homeless people 24 hours seven days a week.The Blanket Patrol Network project will be launched and available from the day of the event forward.
Blanket Patrol Network are organising now. Please email sydneyhomeless@gmail.com to become involved.
The My Homeless Buddy initiative will also be launched and is a one on one opportunity to become proactively engaged with one of our homeless community. Hopefully the relationship that evolves brings positive change in both of your lives. An experienced support person is always just a short phone call away.
To join theres a Facebook Group Here
To solve any problem
- measure it to know what you're dealing with.
- ask "what does a solution look like?" It should include ending the problem.
- identify the method resources and timeline to arrive at that zero problem solution. This would include benchmarks along the timeline showing a progressive reduction of the problem- and cost.
Isn't it bizarre that government departments don't use this methodology? Hold that concept and apply it to the Federal Government's "The Road Home" Homelessness Program which spends $600million plus a year in the name of homeless people -your money which largely funds government and NGOs- while the housing affordability bar rises way beyond the reach of those on minimum wages and homeless numbers inevitably rise with no solution in sight.
Consider the problems.
For homeless people the problem is lack of access to affordable housing.
For the taxpayer there is the huge amount of public funding of a decades long round robin of failed expensive offshore modelled programs run by the same organisations and government departments which ran the last failures.
For society the problem is a rising tide of spiralling housing costs coupled to a heavily regulated income regime which sees more people daily sink beneath the plimsoll line into homelessness.
The problem for NGOs, Government departments bureaucrats and politicians is that the Homelessness "problem" might be solved-and with that their reason to exist might just evaporate along with their revenue streams jobs and power base -and THAT is a very big problem for those hapless homeless ,taxpayers and concerned members of society.
Or put another way, perhaps homelessness is a revenue and power solution for the Poverty sector?
There IS a solution to homelessness. Some societal settings need to be checked and reset.
- Sufficient housing already exists for all. It is inaccessible to those who need it by virtue of price and definition. Sydney Homeless and Occupy Sydney's Occupy4Homeless unit call for immediate legislation requisitioning 1 unit or room per 50 available in every hotel motel or Serviced apartment complex AND every Meriton style complex to be given over to housing homeless people.
- Sydney Homeless and Occupy4Homeless call on the accommodation service providers mentioned at 1/ to voluntarily donate 1 room per complex to the Occupy4Homeless Housing Project ( contact sydneyhomeless@gmail.com ). Your donation will be deductibe.
- Mobile Social Housing: Sydney Homeless and Occupy4Homeless call for an immediate evaluation by government community minded groups and businesses of the opportunity to provide mobile homes as social housing units to itinerant workers and pensioners as a cost effective alternative to conventional social housing-preferably on a lease-to-buy arrangement. They do not have to be new units. Occupy4Homeless is evolving a discussion to this end. Please join via the email above.
- Occupy Sydney call for a Local Minimum wage for each Local body area-based on actual local cost-of-living affordability. The lowest paid in society should not have to travel hours each way to the economic bantustans while the privileged few-or those living on credit cards-afford to live in Sydney-or other expensive metropolitan hubs.
- Sydney Homeless call for Councils Australia wide to be responsible for ensuring that affordable accommodation is available in the localities where people need to live. Using the development application process to achieve this affordable housing balance should see sufficient affordable housing everywhere in Australia within fifteen years.
Theres much more...
If you join us in believing this is a desirable objective and achievable then help us make it reality and homelessness history by the end of 2015 ( email sydneyhomeless@gmail.com )
Of course willing legislators could expedite all of this immediately but at what cost in lost bureaucratic opportunity and ministerial power?
Personal possessions and bedding were unceremoniously dumped onto a council rubbish truck by grinning council workers (until the camera came out) despite protestations from bystanders.
The City of Sydney"s failure to adequately plan for affordable housing is a major driver of homelessness in the city as well as surrounding urban areas. There is little effort by the city to ensure adequate housing for the many low paid or even middle income workers needed for the city and its businesses to function. Surrounding municipalities are treated by the city as its economic bantustans with workers forced to commute daily to and from their locally unsustainably paid jobs. 
