WORLD Homeless Day puts the spotlight on Ipswich residents sleeping in cars, tents and temporary accommodation as the community calls for more affordable housing, emergency shelter and support for those being pushed to the brink.
For resident Stephen Hart, Ipswich’s homelessness crisis is not a statistic buried in a government report but the brutal reality of waking up each morning in his car with nowhere else to call home.
Living on a disability pension, Stephen said soaring rents have left him with virtually no chance of securing somewhere to live, with even a room in a share house now beyond what he can afford.
“The price of rent means I have no chance of getting a rental, and means I am forced to be homeless” he said.
As Ipswich marks World Homeless Day, Stephen’s experience provides a confronting example of the housing pressures being felt across the community.
When residents were asked what Ipswich was doing well to support people experiencing homelessness and what still needed to change, there was strong praise for charities and frontline organisations, but an equally strong belief they cannot solve the problem alone.
Zoe Sparks said Ipswich’s homelessness charities were doing an important job with the resources available to them, but believed governments needed to tackle the shortage of affordable accommodation while providing greater support for people already sleeping rough.
“The homeless charities in Ipswich do a good job with what they have. Though it is a pity they are needed,” she said.
Ms Sparks called for increased social and public housing, greater funding for organisations supporting people living in tents and an end to simply moving rough sleepers from one location to another. She also questioned the reliance on motels as a short-term response rather than providing people with stable accommodation and a pathway towards a permanent home.
Local service Goodna Street Life echoed the need for more immediate accommodation, calling for temporary shelters where people could safely stay while longer-term housing was found. The organisation said Ipswich generally showed tolerance towards people camping when they respected the areas in which they were staying, but believed the State Government needed to provide more shelter options.
The pressure is not confined to those who have already lost their homes, with Dan Armitt saying he was managing to keep a roof over his head, but the amount of money disappearing into rent meant there was increasingly little left for food and other everyday necessities.
“I’m not homeless but I’m broke as I choose to pay a ridiculous amount of rent,” he said. “I can hardly afford to eat or anything like that.”
His experience highlights the increasingly narrow divide between housing stress and homelessness..
Others pointed to smaller, practical measures that could improve conditions for people already sleeping rough.
Belinda Symes praised the availability of public showers near Ipswich Library but called for hot water to be provided, while Avril Brown said local charities were doing everything they could and suggested better use could be made of existing public housing.
For Lisa New, the discussion ultimately comes back to the basic importance of having somewhere safe and secure to live.
“Human rights are not ‘words’, they are rights,” she said. “There is a basic right for people to be able to have a home, even if it is only basic, but safe, clean, comfortable, private, secure – theirs.”
In Ipswich, those frontline organisations continue to provide food, showers, outreach, emergency assistance and support, often working with people during some of the most difficult periods of their lives.
But the voices of Ipswich residents also show how the face of homelessness and housing insecurity is changing.
On World Homeless Day, their message is difficult to ignore: behind every debate about rents, housing supply and emergency accommodation are real people trying to find somewhere safe to call home.
