THIS is not the first time that Redland City Bulletin has reported on the plight of homeless people in our city.
In 2015 and 2016, the paper wrote about organisations helping people who were sleeping rough and told stories of people sleeping in tents and on the streets. One man was donated a wheelchair after he shared his circumstances through the paper.
In May 2016, a man in his seventies was ordered by Redland City Council officers to leave bushland at Alexandra Hills where he had been living in a tent.
Last week people sleeping in tents near an industrial area at Capalaba were visited by police and told by council to move on.
One said he felt exposed when federal MP Andrew Laming posted an aerial photograph on social media showing where they were living. Later Laming took credit, using the hashtag “NoApologiesForActing”. He said nine months of bush camping came to a swift end when he called out tent accommodation.
Actually, no better approach to dealing with homelessness in the Redlands was found as a result of Laming outing homeless people on Facebook. The day before they were supposed to move their tents, they had no idea of where they would sleep or keep their few possessions.
Horowai Rameka, who leads Redland Community Centre’s homeless project, had six people staying at his home because they had nowhere else to go. Some homeless people say they are moving their tents almost daily to avoid being found, while others are sleeping in their cars. Young people in their twenties are anxious about how they will show five years of good rental history to access housing, while the father of a 16-year-old hopes that he will look presentable for a job interview after sleeping in a tent.
In 2016, a person from an organisation that works with homeless people said there was a lack of services for people who were homeless. She asked: “What are we in the Redlands doing to help these people?”
The answer then is much the same as it is now. Help for people sleeping rough in the Redlands is mostly from organisations. Some receive government funding for their work but when it comes to finding solutions for homelessness, hostility and animosity between politicians creates obstacles. Rather than asking what other levels of government are doing about this issue, our politicians need to look at themselves and what they can do and how they can work together.
