Few of us who live, work or shop in our CBD can fail to be confronted by the increasing numbers of people sleeping rough on our streets. Where did all these people shrouded in blankets and swags come from? How does a city this wealthy and supposedly liveable produce such striking evidence of entrenched poverty?
Our escalating anxieties are justified. In June, the City of Melbourne's biennial Street Count confirmed that 247 people were sleeping rough in the CBD. This is a record increase in street homelessness, up 74 per cent from two years ago. What's to be done?
![Illustration: Andrew Dyson](/web/20160716011027im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/5/n/r/4/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gq5dno.png/1468489122945.jpg)
If only there were just one answer to this wickedest of problems. Homelessness is caused by a series of factors, therefore it can only be ended through a range of diverse interventions working in concert. And housing, the most recognisable solution, is just one part of the puzzle.
Before we explore five potential solutions to homelessness, let's examine more closely the people affected. Our experience and research demonstrate that people who are long-term homeless and sleeping rough are more likely to have had traumatic childhoods involving abuse, time in state care, incomplete schooling, mental ill health along with physical and mental disabilities. Drugs, legal and illicit, are often used to self-medicate for the symptoms of mental illness.
![How does a city this wealthy and supposedly liveable produce such striking evidence of entrenched poverty?](/web/20160716011027im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/p/b/d/c/2/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gq5dno.png/1468478397502.jpg)
It's important to underscore that all too often significant damage already has taken place before people become homeless. A traumatic childhood, combined with limited education and no marketable skills practically guarantees a life of disadvantage.
It follows that there are two critical and preventive first steps in tackling homelessness.
The first is ensuring that our child protection services are adequately resourced. Where there is physical and sexual abuse, swifter and more effective child protection interventions are urgently required.
The second is a need to build a better resourced, more effective state school system, particularly in disadvantaged regions. This is crucial to ensure that children complete high school and enter appropriate higher education or training courses. A job is the best path out of poverty and homelessness.
![Illustration: Andrew Dyson](/web/20160716011027im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/5/v/4/w/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gq5dno.png/1468478397502.jpg)
The third critical element is ensuring that drug and alcohol responses, particularly detox beds and rehabilitation programs, are adequately funded and available when required.
Workers frequently meet people who desperately want to get support for serious substance dependencies. Unfortunately, in most cases, a drug and alcohol intake assessment may not be available for a week or two. After this, it's likely there will be several more weeks to wait before a detox bed is available.
Longer-term rehabilitation for substance dependency is even harder to obtain and we rarely see people gain access to this much needed therapeutic intervention. The system is grotesquely inadequate. Bottom line: When people living chaotic lives of high-risk substance taking can't access services immediately when they are ready to make the change, they frequently give up. Some of them overdose.
The fourth step is ensuring there is sufficient crisis accommodation and public housing stock.
At present, if you show up at any homelessness service in Melbourne looking for crisis accommodation you will be unlikely to find a bed for the night. Crisis accommodation is almost always fully booked. It can take weeks or months to obtain a crisis bed. Unfortunately, this has been true for many years.
Homelessness services are so accustomed to turning people away that many of them keep supplies of blankets. People in great need get used to hearing, "Sorry, there aren't any vacancies. All we can do for now is give you a blanket."
There are fewer than 400 crisis accommodation beds for adults in Melbourne. Yet there are about 23,000 people without permanent housing in Victoria. We also know that about 8000 people are living in unsafe and inappropriate dwellings, from back garden sheds to ramshackle houses without power or water.
A staggering 30,000 people are on the Victorian public housing waiting list. Many have languished there for years. Without a substantial investment in housing stock, we will have to get used to witnessing more people living, sleeping and dying on our streets.
The fifth and final step in resolving long-term homelessness is achieved by providing people with a support worker to assist them for two or three years, rather than the customary three months of support most homeless services are funded to provide.
If the issues that led to a person's homelessness are not addressed, they often lose their way and return to the streets only months after securing accommodation. Long-term support provides a consistent worker to assist people to maintain their housing and acquire robust independent living skills.
This helps them acquire budgeting and financial skills, learn how to manage daily frustrations and address their mental ill health and substance use and gradually reintegrate into mainstream society.
Rapid access to accommodation combined with intensive, long-term support and readily available drug and alcohol services is a mix that works best. When services and workers are able to provide this targeted combination to people who have been homeless for years, they are able to leave homelessness behind permanently.
Why are the numbers of homeless on our streets increasing? Because for too many years we have provided temporary solutions to people's problems without adequately addressing the structural causes and investing in lasting solutions. We need to get our act together before the problem becomes too big to solve.
Chris Middendorp works for Sacred Heart Mission in Melbourne
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