Shelter has a fundamental place in the hierarchy of human needs: it comes in just after air, water and food – a basic necessity. In any society some can be pushed so far down the hierarchy that even this basic need is lacking: they are left without shelter, without a home. How a society deals with its most vulnerable members shows its true quality and character.
It seems paradoxical, almost an absurdity, to speak about the desperate, elemental struggle in which the homeless are engaged in the same context as the Sydney real estate market. Yet in this city, the two are closely linked. The same forces which push real estate values up through the stratosphere and beyond it are acting to force consumers at the bottom out onto the streets, into the parks and under the bridges and subways.
![A man lays outside the State Library of New South Wales, in the background, the offices of New South Wales Parliament.](/web/20170117062608im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/r/h/y/y/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtr4pa.png/1484442325456.jpg)
For those engaged in it, the real estate market can seem all about wealth, consumption and display – perhaps at times in dubious taste and wasteful, but a celebration nonetheless of a consumer society's power to create desires and satisfy them. But the sad juxtaposition of power and powerlessness in our report shows how it fails.
We report today a sharp irony in one result of this process: from the windows of the Premier's suite in Parliament House a small encampment of the homeless is visible. The great and the good – those whom society has empowered to enact its wishes – can look down and ponder the fate of those whom their decisions and policies and those of their predecessors have marginalised.
There is political showmanship here: an encampment is a statement as well as a makeshift dwelling, and advocates for the homeless use it to push their barrow. Yet the underlying point is undeniable: homelessness shames our society.
We have been told for so long that housing is unaffordable that it no longer surprises us. Yet it should. The theory of markets suggests that things cannot become unaffordable: if buyers cannot afford something, sellers will lower their price to make a sale. That doesn't happen in real estate. Buyers – and that includes people looking for a home to rent, or renters looking to buy a first home – go away empty-handed. The pressure that creates pushes all the way down to the bottom, where those down on their luck through unemployment, family breakdown or mental illness are seeking shelter.
In failing to operate rationally, the real estate market fails society itself. For our society to function adequately, people in lower paid jobs have to be able to live near their work. As things stand, that is increasingly impossible. The state government is to be commended for attempting to redress this situation. It has increased the supply of housing. It has required some large new developments near central Sydney to set aside a proportion of dwellings as affordable housing. It has spent millions on helping the homeless.
Advocates for the homeless concede that there will always be some who sleep rough. All those things are true. But the homeless statistics are a serious reproach. They tell us that our current efforts are not good enough.