Home Sweet Home...

He has two battered knapsacks slung over his shoulders, plastic bags hung like curtains on one arm, tattered clothing from head to toe, what looks to be the remnants of an ancient umbrella in the clutches of his other hand.

I’ve seen this gentleman line up for food from local charities, seen him walk from one end of our small city to the other, watched him sit patiently on a park bench in the middle of the city centre. At times, when the weather gets too cold, in that very brief period between the close of shops in the mall and the final lockdown of the buildings, he makes his way through the glass doors and sits by the nearest air vent, calm, quiet, by himself.

I don’t know his name, his story, his background, yet in my city of 350,000 people, he is as ever-present as the great House on the Hill not far from here.

He is but 1 of the 105,000 Australians who sleep on the street every single night.

We’re not talking about Bangladesh or India or Colombia; this is the Lucky Country, with free healthcare, affordable housing, social security from A to Z and some of the best living conditions in the world.

How then is it possible to have so very many of our fellow citizens having to endure the harshness of street living, day in and day out?

In Canberra alone we have 1,364 people outside tonight, with no-where to go.

This isn’t a problem half-way around the world. This is not an issue which enjoys much media coverage, and yet it is one of the most ridiculous, most frustrating situations in our country today.

A quarter of Australia’s homeless are children; that’s almost one in four homeless people under 18. Of every 42 Australian children under four, one has experienced homelessness. Every day, half the people who request immediate accommodation from the homeless service system are turned away, staggering when you consider 12,300 on an average day will be accommodated in services funded by the Government’s Supported Accommodation Assistance Program (SAAP). Two in every 3 children who need support are also turned away, as are almost 80% percent of families. The Indigenous population is facing even worse statistics. While Indigenous Australians comprise 2.4 percent of the population, they represent 10 percent of the homeless.

Homelessness Australia is one of the many organizations trying to solve the problem. Their research shows homelessness can be caused by poverty, unemployment and by a critical shortage of affordable housing. Yet most disturbingly, domestic violence is the single largest cause of homelessness in Australia. Add triggers such as family breakdown, mental illness, sexual assault, addiction, financial difficulty, gambling and social isolation, and it quickly becomes apparent that solving homelessness in this country is not simply a matter of building more Government Housing.

Even more disturbing, there are signs that homelessness may be getting worse.

In a recent report, Don't Dream It's Over, the St Vincent de Paul Society found that the number of families with children seeking assistance from homelessness services increased by 30 per cent between 2002 and 2007. Homeless children too often become homeless teenagers and then homeless adults.

2005-06 SAAP data confirms this upward trend. The number of families with children seeking assistance from homelessness services has increased by 46 per cent over the past 10 years. The number of children in SAAP services has increased by 7.3 per cent over the same period. That means that each year, approximately 55,000 children accompany their parents into SAAP services, and these are just the figures we know of; the true extent of homelessness is understated because many homeless Australians do not approach government services. It is difficult to estimate the true number of families escaping violence while they are living temporarily with friends or family.

This Thursday, over 100 CEOs from a diverse range of industries will be sleeping outside in support of the St Vinnies CEO Sleepout project, which aims not only to raise funds to continue their support of our homeless, but also to raise the profile of this issue amongst ordinary Australians.

I will be taking part in the sleepout in front of the National Museum in Canberra. It will be cold, it will be wet, it will be windy.

But a man in my community walks the streets every day looking for a safe, dry place to sleep at night, with no security, no roof, no place to call home.

And that’s just not good enough.