City of Sydney steal Homeless Camp gear from private property on Martin Place

 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

City of Sydney exposing Homeless & Public to needless health risks

  The City of Sydney Council have for years taken homeless peoples bedding packs and personal belongings -and when able to be identified returned the property to its owner. We have asked many who have recovered property over the past eight months and NOT ONE PERSON has been told of the health risks associated with removal of property in rubbish trucks. 

 The City also forcibly removes tents being used by our Homeless Community to Shelter forcing people to sleep in less healthy conditions exposed to inclement weather. 

 Street washers, using high powered truck mounted mobile gernis fail to deploy any safety equipment. We have seen members of the public knocked over and sprayed with water as this process is being effected.

 The Current Clover Moore Council has lost its lustre in its quest to appease the Citys Elites and Corporate occupants. 

 We call for an immediate review of all health and safety procedures within Council by an Independent Assessor.

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. 

Building Sustainable #Fairpay in Sydney

In our many years of dealing with homelessness and marginalisation, we are yet to see a government supported program which has a sunset clause, a measure of success involving zero ongoing government funding because the marginalisation issue has been successfully and permanently resolved. 


 Under the current Rudd/Gillard #Labor and the immediate past Howard Abbott Coalition Governments we have in fact witnessed a rise in the income bar at which social marginalisation kicks in, a rise in the number of marginalised and a progressive increase in repetitive funding calls on the taxpayer.


 There are no government or Poverty Industry strategies to end poverty and marginalisation. Yet there are billions of Taxpayer dollars spent in the name of Homeless and other marginalised community sectors. The inconvenient truth is that our homeless name, along with that of the long-suffering aboriginal community, children, families and economically marginalised workers, is being used by State and Federal governments and a gaggle of co-dependent NGOs, to bilk the Taxpayer out of billions of dollars annually. This daylight robbery of the working Australian taxpayer has to end - and soon. 


 While State and Federal Governments wax lyrical about "sound economic management" they in fact produce the economic results they claim by digging deeper into the legislatively thinned pockets of working Australians. Ever more taxes, and ever less solutions has been a consistent characteristic of the Charlatan Australian political leadership of the past two decades. A recent example is the 25% hike in cigarette taxes which severely impacts low income workers & Benefit claimants,as it was designed to.
 For every social marginalisation issue,there are swelling numbers of people and swelling government and NGO budgets,but no solutions.Despite the diabolical Patrick McClure inspired "Workchoices" and "McClure Report" Howard era millions spent on NGOs, homelessness and marginalised numbers rose. The Rudd/Gillard Labor "The Road Home" and Stimulus Package spend of $6billion plus in the name of homeless people has seen asset increases for State Governments and NGOs, and an alarming growth in homeless numbers. Surely a sign that this program is not working?? Instead, Government and NGOs promote one self serving scheme after the other-including diabolical families and aboriginal schemes which actually exacerbate the perceived problems. And so with homelessness. The furphy of solving homelessness and aboriginal issues with jobs is undermined by bi-partisan legislation severely curtailing workers rights to organise and lobby effectively for #FairPay. For example Agency workers cannot picket their actual place of employment, due to Howard era anti-worker secondary boycott laws which Labor disliked so much,they kept. 


 I could,but won't,continue forever with a discourse dissecting the disastrous policies of past and present governments, or their NGO parasite friends. I will tell you what we ( and you are welcome to join us) are doing about it.


 Our initiatives aim to provide homeless, at-risk-of-homelessness and other marginalised community members with a self directed strategy to exit marginalisation by building an income base in which the participant owns or shares in the developed equity.Without govenment or NGO support -and without benefits to those parties.


 Our most successful project commenced in June 2009.Our IT based off the streets concept leverages a number of pre-existing online tools and strategies which participants use to derive an income.Our measure of success is an income of $Au1300 per week, which is the minimum a single person needs to live comfortably and make choices in Sydney. We have as of last night successfully helped 245 people to achieve this goal online.Delivery has been manually and we haven't charged for training or anything...but it will be available to all online as soon as we can guarantee it is not usable by parasite JobNetwork NGOs to claim $20000 success fees for doing nothing...or contact us @SydneyHomeless if you're in Sydney..more soon.  


 We are launching @BannerBikes in about 3 weeks - a powerful promotional service commencing in Sydney in August . Further info  This service will allow Sydney Homeless people to participate in and build an income and equity share in a viable workers community controlled collective,providing innovative service partnerships to Sydney and Australian businesses