Sleepout highlights Canberra homelessness

The Australian Bureau of Statistics shows we have the highest average incomes in the nation, which Credit Suisse Group's latest Global Wealth Report declares is the wealthiest per capita in the world.

However, Communities@Work chief executive officer Lynne Harwood has noticed the growing number of ACT residents falling behind.

She said it was not just single mothers and pensioners doing it tough. In the past 10 to 15 years she has started to see a new demographic seeking support - the working poor.

"We never used to see the phenomenon of working people needing support," she said. "This is working people living so fine to that line that it only takes the car to have mechanical problems, or they've got an extra bill, and they can't cope.

"Canberra is a very difficult city to be poor in."

As part of the 2014 Anti-Poverty Week, the ACT Council of Social Service and Women's Centre for Health Matters released data showing the only work for many Territorians on offer was low-paid casual and part-time jobs.

ACTCOSS director Susan Helyar said the high costs of living in the ACT mean low and insecure income workers couldn't earn enough income to cover their costs of living.

"In a city with relatively low unemployment rates, 9.1 per cent of people living in Canberra are living in poverty," she said.

"When you're living on the greased edge of poverty slipping into homeless is a real danger."

Communities@Work, using statistics from Foodbank Australia's End of Hunger Report, claim more than 30,000 people in Canberra rely on emergency food relief services.

Canberra also have the second-highest rate of homeless per capita in the nation behind the Northern Territory, according to the ABS.

Although the ACT has high public housing per capita in comparison to other states and territories, it hasn't kept pace with demand.

Neither has emergency or crisis accommodation.

Victims of domestic violence are regularly turned away due to lack of emergency housing supply. Moreover, under-25s competing with families for rental accommodation often find it difficult to get a foot in the door.

One Canberran who knows what it's like being without in a city with so much is Kylie Ofiu.

She revealed the slide from comfortable to desperate can be frightening and swift.

"There is no middle class here," she said. "It seems you are either poor or really well-off."

"I had a pretty standard life," she said. "I was married and had two kids."

But when the relationship turned violent she fled to Canberra with her young daughters. They spent Christmas in a friend's garage.

"We were relatively safe and much better off than a lot of women who were leaving their partners," she said.

These days she is a successful businesswoman and works with chief executivess and company directors but says many of her peers are unaware of the city's working poor.

"There is a lot of ignorance about how many people are struggling," she says.

For some politicians and economists the wealth gap is not that important. What matters is social mobility and a pathway out of poverty.

Former Howard government minister Amanda Vanstone, in a recent Fairfax Media column, believes social mobility would be a better focus of our attention.

"Can a young person born into less fortunate circumstances climb out of them?," she wrote.

"As it turns out, Australia rates extremely well in social mobility rankings."

But she concedes it is worrying the poorest 20 per cent of households in Australia get about 70 per cent of their income from welfare – which is much higher than the OECD average.

As the wealth gap grows the wider the rungs on the social mobility ladder become.

Fraser MP Andrew Leigh, author of Battlers & Billionaires: The story of inequality in Australia, believes "more inequality leads to less social mobility".

He highlights the United States as a striking example of how social mobility collapses in the face of devastating inequality.

It is an extreme inequality Australians are cautioned against but trends indicate the ACT is headed that direction.

St Vincent de Paul Society Canberra/Goulburn chief executive officer Paul Trezise says the main factors driving homelessness in Canberra are a lack of affordable housing, domestic violence and people unable to manage their financial stress.

While strategies have been mapped out to address homelessness, such as the 2008 Road Home white paper, Mr Trezise says the federal government is reluctant to engage in the area.

ACT Liberal Senator Zed Seselja declined to answer an in-depth list of questions relating to homelessness in Canberra and whether he was concerned about a growing wealth gap.

A spokeswoman for Mr Seselja told The Canberra Times homelessness was a "serious social issue".

"The responsibility for helping some of our most vulnerable citizens does not lie with one particular level of government or community organisation," she said.

Wwith two-thirds of Canberra's homeless population under 25, Mr Trezise has serious concern about proposed federal government policies which could make homelessness a lot worse.

"The one that has us most concerned is the waiting periods for young people on unemployment benefits," he says. "If there was a six-month waiting period put in we believe that would have a massive impact on the demand that would be placed on us and on the number of people that would push into homelessness in that age group.

"It is just a very unhelpful measure."

Youth Coalition of the ACT director Emma Robertson says there is potentially a massive impact on young people from such a policy.

"From our point of view the people making these decisions, or at least putting this forward politically, don't understand how things work on the ground," Ms Robertson said.

There is already a desperate need for emergency housing and crisis accommodation in Canberra.

On any given night there are almost 2000 homeless Canberrans and up to 400 people a week seek emergency accommodation, according to Communities@Work.

Ms Harwood says half the people who seek emergency accommodation are regularly turned away.

She says what is not well known is the next group of about 10,000 people who are one minor obstacle away from being homeless.

To raise awareness about homeless in the ACT, and people at risk of homelessness, St Vincent de Paul and Communities@Work will host the second Canberra Community Sleepout on November 14.

Mr Trezise said the idea for the sleepout came from the success of the CEO Sleepout - an event where notable business leaders sleep rough for one night in winter to experience homelessness.

"We've found that really useful in targeting a small but very influential bunch of people in two ways," he said.

"First of all they help us in raising funds to assist the work that we're doing, which is only partly funded by government and is always under stress.

"Secondly, it informs people about the true nature of homelessness and they start thinking about the sort of things they can do as organisations to help in a very practical way."

The Canberra Community Sleepout takes place at the Australian Institute of Sport in Bruce. To register or donate, visit sleepout.org.au.