Homelessness in Australia.

From the inner city to the outer suburbs, statistics tell us that there are several hundreds of people sleeping on the streets, in cars or who are simply homeless. And that is just in Melbourne alone. People are having difficulty all over Australia, and all over the world, with the majority not knowing where there next meal will come from. Brad Ellis, coordinator of project 614 (a Salvation Army bus that gives homeless a place to sleep) says that the main homeless youth in Melbourne are children who are no longer with the department of human services (who have fallen through the gaps).As the so called most livable city in the world, does Melbourne really do enough for their homeless? No I don’t believe it does.

From the point of view of the general public, the State and Federal Government are more interested in data, rather than paying for projects and going straight to fixing the problem. Although on 27 January 2008, the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd MP and the former Minister for Housing, Tanya Plibersek MP, announced the Government’s new approach to tackling the problem of homelessness in Australia through the development of a comprehensive, long-term plan. Don’t know if that plan actually worked because it has been years since then and there are still thousands of homeless in Australia. Of course Melbourne is aware of the issue of homelessness in their city, but do they really care? The Government do what they think is necessary to help the needy, but they obviously do not do enough. If Melbourne and the Government really wanted to end poverty on the streets for good, the problem would already have been resolved, a long time ago

While majority of the people living in Australia are tucked in bed, the rest are somewhere still trying to find shelter. They may be in a dark corner next to a rubbish bin perhaps? Or even locking the door to a public toilet block, getting ready to rest their heads on the freezing cold concrete. So many terrible possibilities for the