First step is more homes and support
As Homelessness Week gets under way, Mat Rowell explains the complex issues.
AT Relationships Australia Tasmania, we see the impact homelessness has on the wellbeing of families, children and our community.
The divide between those with secure housing and those without is growing. The number of homeless Australians jumped 14 per cent in the five years between the 2011 and 2016 Census.
The factors that lead to homelessness are varied and complex. For some of our clients, ongoing difficulties with addiction, mental health issues and past trauma make it difficult to maintain employment, healthy relationships and a home.
For others, family violence, separation and unstable relationships turn their homes into places of risk and harm.
If a parent experiences homelessness, it not only poses them with the issue of housing but dramatically impacts on their capacity to provide protection and support and to respond to their children’s needs.
They must cope with a double crisis: the trauma of losing a home as well as the burdened challenge of functioning as a consistent and supportive parent.
Consider Sam, whose story has become typical. Sam (not her real name) is a client in our Children’s Contact Service, which helps children stay connected to all members of their family after separation. Family separations can be tough. For a whole number of reasons, it can be hard for families to manage parenting arrangements, and for children to spend time with both parents and extended family. After separating from her partner, Sam struggled to find and maintain secure housing, affecting not only her ability to parent and support her children but also her children’s wellbeing.
Families experiencing homelessness are disproportionately more likely to have experienced economic, health, and social risk factors. These experiences can adversely influence the parent-child relationship.
Sam’s children, as a result of her lack of housing, now only see their mother when with our Children’s Contact Service. Clients who engage in the Children’s Contact Service program aim towards establishing a visitation and contact agreement that eventually sees them independent of the service. This is hard for many of our clients such as Sam who, without a secure place to live struggle to progress past this stage to self-management.
Housing availability and affordability was a large factor in Sam’s difficulty to secure a place to live. In Tasmania this is a persistent and growing problem. More than 74,000 Tasmanians live below the poverty line, and as housing costs rise, it has become harder for low-income earners to find a home they can afford. In Hobart, homelessness has risen 21 per cent in the past five years.
Upon finding a house, Sam hoped to progress to overnight stays with her children, but a one-bedroom apartment with multiple people does not qualify as a suitable environment to bring children into. Not having suitable living arrangements is a barrier for many clients, simply finding a home is not enough and not the whole solution.
In counselling, we often work with separated couples who consider themselves homeless, but are living under the same roof after their relationship has ended because there are no alternative housing options. Add variables such as family violence, personal safety, and child safety concerns, and the plight of people “living under the same roof” can become a critical concern.
We understand that homelessness is more than merely not having a bed for the night. The solution mirrors the complexity of the problem, but we know intuitively that prevention is the right thing to do, but it has often been easier said than done.
We need robust crisis intervention, housing programs and mental health services. The community must build support and make space for the people who are already here. Put bluntly, we need more homes for Tasmanians in need — only after can we think about employment and help keep them socially connected and physically and emotionally well.
Homelessness Week runs from today until Sunday.