The founder of the St Vincent de Paul Society, 19th century French activist academic, Frederic Ozanam, wrote: 'Charity is the Samaritan who pours oil on the wounds of the traveller who has been attacked. It is the role of justice to prevent the attack.'
We would be poorer as a nation without the outpouring of human kindness through charities. But the prevention of homelessness should be seen as a matter of justice, and for that charity is no substitute.
More than 100,000 people are homeless on any given night. Almost half are under 25. Every day, half the people who request immediate accommodation from homelessness services are turned away. Two in every three children who need support are turned away. Contrary to many of the persistent myths about homelessness in Australia, women and children are the biggest users of specialist homelessness services.
On 17 June CEOs and community leaders across the nation participated in the first St Vincent de Paul Society CEO
Sleepout. They slept out in order to raise
funds for, and increase awareness of, homelessness in Australia.
I participated in the Sleepout in Canberra. For me, the most moving and useful element was the presentation given by a couple of people who had been experiencing homelessness. Two points emerged. One is that homelessness is a social problem, not primarily a personal one, because we continue as a society to condone or explain away the reality of violence against women.
The other is that homelessness is a profoundly political problem. The absence of political will is the fundamental obstacle to ending homelessness. A good place to begin would be to guarantee everyone the right to adequate housing. Since the private rental market is notoriously bad at this, governments must do what markets cannot.
If this sounds like a utopian fantasy, it is far more fanciful to imagine that we are saving money by leaving things the way they are. The economic and social costs of homelessness crisis are enormous.
In 2006 journalist Malcolm Gladwell wrote in The New Yorker about Million Dollar Murray, a man who had experienced chronic homelessness, with all the concomitant health problems. When Murray died it was estimated that the costs to the state of maintaining Murray in his condition of homelessness came out at US$1 million. Providing him with secure housing would have provided a base from which other problems could have been addressed. Secure, appropriate