For a year and a half, Paul Slater has helped provide homeless Brisbane residents a place to live.
He’s handed out hundreds of tents; during the city’s worst housing crisis in living memory, they’ve proven a residence of last resort for many.
On Thursday, Slater, the head of North West Community Group, was threatened with a fine by Brisbane city council if he persisted.
“The council has essentially told me that I had 24 hours to remove the tents from Musgrave Park, and that I’m not allowed to put tents on public land any more, and that they would be enforcing the laws, which allow them to fine up to $8,000 for putting tents up,” Slater says.
“They’re trying to make it illegal to be homeless, which is the same thing that the Moreton council have done.”
In the aftermath of Tropical Cyclone Alfred, Brisbane city council on Thursday announced a plan to crack down on rough sleepers, asking police to “ensure anyone living in a park who has refused accommodation is moved on within 24 hours”.
The lord mayor, Adrian Schrinner, said the council would also “remove unused empty tents”.
He’s not the first; a similar crackdown by the City of Moreton Bay went into effect on Wednesday. Schrinner said his action came in response to reports “people who are homeless by choice” are planning to “pour into Brisbane” from Moreton Bay.
Condemnation was swift. The Greens called it “cruel and hypocritical”. The Labor council opposition said it was “heartless”.
A costly diversion
In Melbourne, another council is considering the same hardline approach to homelessness.
The City of Port Phillip, which spans a number of inner Melbourne suburbs including beachside St Kilda, voted last week to investigate changing local laws to prohibit people from sleeping rough on council land. It said the move came in response to pressure by residents complaining about antisocial behaviour.
Laura Mahoney, executive director of homelessness solutions and impact at Launch Housing, told Guardian Australia that on any given day it had about 800 people across metropolitan Melbourne waiting for a bed in crisis supported accommodation.
Peter McGrath, the Salvation Army’s state manager of homelessness in Victoria, says Port Phillip council’s decision to investigate changing laws will be a “costly exercise” that will “cause more harm than good”.
McGrath warned that resources required to enforce the laws, including police and the state’s magistrates court, would only divert resources away from more serious matters.
Crystel, a First Nations woman residing in Launch Housing’s 15-bed supported crisis accommodation in St Kilda, has spent stints sleeping rough in Melbourne.
“Everybody who is homeless has suffered some sort of trauma … Now they’ve got the council looking down on them,” she says of the City of Port Phillips potential move.
“It’s kicking someone when they’re already down.
“I don’t think it’s right. It’s not right at all.”
‘Homelessness is never a choice’
As Tropical Cyclone Alfred bore down on south-east Queensland, hundreds of homeless people abandoned their tents, taking shelter in temporary evacuation centres.
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The government has repeatedly claimed that all homeless people taking shelter were offered emergency accommodation in the meantime. That appears to be incorrect. In at least one case, housing staff never attended a centre at all, Guardian Australia has been told.
Some of the shelters closed before the rain even stopped.
Schrinner has used the incorrect claim to suggest that “people are living in parks, in tents by choice”. Only those people will be targeted by the crackdown, he has said.
He says all council is doing is asking North West Community Group not to put up any more tents, and that council has instructed staff not to threaten homeless people with fines.
“What council can do is we can make sure that there are no tents in parks, and so we’ll give 24 hours notice, once we have a chance to talk to each individual, that the tents will be removed, and we will be removing those tents,” he says.
The chief executive officer of Micah Projects, Karyn Walsh, says of about 261 people it registered as seeking accommodation during the cyclone, 146 have been denied it due to a lack of identification. Another 44 with identification are still waiting for accommodation.
A minority, only 71 people, have received accommodation, she says.
“People are still waiting because not everyone was offered accommodation.”
Nourish Street founder Beau Haywood, who feeds street sleepers in Moreton Bay, says he has the names and phone numbers of 57 individuals who never received an offer.
“They’ve put their names down with housing multiple times. They engage with housing constantly, and they’ve not been offered a thing,” he says.
For those who have refused, there are often good reasons, he says. One person he met was offered a home so far away he would have had to surrender his full-time job.
Brisbane Youth Service CEO Pam Barker says “homelessness is never a choice”.
“As of yesterday, there were no available safe options in temporary accommodation for young people in Brisbane,” she says.
“When safe options aren’t available, young people are forced to find the least dangerous alternative – grouping together in public spaces, staying awake all night to avoid harm, or couch-surfing in unsafe environments that put them at high risk of exploitation and further trauma.”
Barker said banning tents without providing an alternative only puts homeless kids in greater danger.
Walsh is concerned about a race to the bottom, pushing them from one council to another, forcing each in turn to crack down.
“The race to the bottom is if we criminalise it, and Moreton Bay has said they’re going to issue fines; Brisbane hasn’t. We don’t know whether that’s true or whether there will be a consequence of fines,” she says.
At last count, there were 47,820 people on Queensland’s social housing waiting list. The average wait is two and a half years.