Thursday, July 8, 1999
HOUSING PROBLEMS
Inner divide
The increased gentrification of inner Sydney has put pressure on those
who are used to calling its streets home, writes DEBORAH SNOW.
THE two buildings bristle at each other across a narrow inner-city
street barely seven metres wide. On one corner stands the upscale new
apartment block, with occupants who have jobs and the means to enjoy the
glittering attractions of Oxford Street that are only a stone's throw
away. On the opposite kerb, hunkered down behind a concrete wall, is the
mission-run hostel, offering destitute men a place to sober up and a bed
for a few weeks.
Denham Street, Surry Hills, is more than just a thin strip of asphalt
separating the two. It marks a deep fault-line in the social geography
of the inner city - a place where the incoming tide of gentrification
meets the undertow of entrenched homelessness and deprivation.
Investors, empty-nesters, and younger professionals seeking the buzz and
convenience of inner-city life have been flooding into the once
down-at-heel area.
Yet, having bought the dream, they find themselves tripping (sometimes
literally) over a more confronting reality on their doorsteps - the
slumped body in a darkened doorway, human excreta and vomit on the
pavements, the night shattered by arguments drifting up from the street below.
Many have moved in overlooking the fact that there was an older urban
subculture here long before they arrived - the "tribe" of dispossessed
and homeless, serviced by a network of charitable agencies which have
been rooted here for decades. Within just a few streets in Surry Hills,
nearly 40 centres operate. Their presence has sparked an intense debate
of the "What came first - chicken or egg" variety.
The newcomers, with their investments to protect and an understandable
desire for a user-friendly neighbourhood, complain they are shouldering
more than their fair share of Sydney's social problems. They say if the
agencies went elsewhere, so would the homeless. The agencies respond
that they are here because the "clients" are - and that all over the
world, the destitute gravitate to the heart of big cities seeking the
comfort and anonymity of the herd. Better to be near the epicentre of
the problem and moderate the impact on the surrounding community.
So intense has the debate become that one hostel manager, Wesley
Mission's David Pocklington, writes of it as war. In a recent study
titled Whither Welfare in Surry Hills? he decribes the new arrivals as
"the stormtroopers ... [who] would like to roll in with the heavy
artillery and tanks and flush the enemy right out of the inner-city
area. In the background, and using all the cunning learnt over many
years of community action, are the long-term residents who know how to
slowly wage a multifaceted war of attrition."
Keiran Booth, who runs Campbell House men's hostel for the Sydney City
Mission, says his clients are easy targets. "We've had people set
alight, they've had buckets of urine poured over them, they've been
abused, spat on, vilified."
Graffiti sprayed on the external walls of Campbell House one night
declared it a "Labor Slum Zone". Four years ago, he alleges, the hostel
received a "symbolic eviction notice" from some development interests.
The implicit message was "no-one's going to buy units in the area if
they have to look at your scum. We want you guys out."
Sydney City Mission's mobile service, Missionbeat, agrees intolerance is
growing. Manager Allen Ewing says: "I've had people ringing me up saying
I've got a bum on my doorstep. I say that's interesting - is there any
more of the body attached or is it just a bum? They're not accorded any
dignity."
Nor is it just public compassion which is running thin. Some hostel
managers are convinced that some of the city's big hospitals
occasionally mete out perfunctory treatment to the homeless, with one
claiming a hospital had several times "dumped" homeless patients on him
when he felt they were clearly in need of further medical attention.
Feeling the heat from developers and their customers, councils are
responding by making the urban environment more hostile to those who
sleep and live rough. Council officers will not admit to any such policy
officially, but the agencies say the evidence speaks for itself.
"Seating is withdrawn so our clients have to sit on milk crates in the
gutter," says Booth. "We've already been told we're not allowed to
expand our services in this area. So we can't set up a separate coffee
shop, or drop-in centre to give them somewhere to gather off the street.
The toilets have all been closed to stop shooting galleries. That leads
to people relieving themselves on the street. Where else are they going
to go? To solve one problem you create another."
No Alcohol Zones are also being expanded but Booth says this simply
results in police getting called out to displace the problem from one
street corner to the next.
Independent State MP Clover Moore, whose seat of Bligh takes in many of
the contested areas, says local government has failed to anticipate the
conflict.
"Council is allowing all this rezoning, but they seem to think they can
keep pouring people into the city and thats it," she says.
"Empty-nesters moving in say to me 'I'm from Mosman'. They're stunned by
the injecting, the homelessness, the traffic. Sometimes people have no
idea what they are walking into. Council should be trying to identify
collision courses before they occur." She wants State and local
government to co-ordinate more support for the area, from more regular
street cleaning to mental health outreach teams.
She's also pressuring hostels such as Campbell House to provide within
its premises a "wet" area where the homeless could drink away from the
street. But Booth points out he's trying to run a detox program and
provide men with respite from alcohol and drugs. The aim is to get most
of them into secure medium-term accommodation. The last thing he needs
is "'a party going on downstairs".
Local activists have started a series of neighbourhood summits to try to
thrash out an accord. It keeps both sides talking. But the Wesley
Mission's Pocklington asks: "Is it possible that the 'trendies' who are
moving into Surry Hills will eventually destroy the very variety and
vibrancy that attracted them away from the boredom of the further
suburbs in the first place?"
Yet one long-time resident of Surry Hills, who doesn't wish to be named,
denies its just the 'trendies' who are in revolt. She says the area's
traditional street dwellers have changed. An increasing number, she
says, have some form of mental illness - an observation backed up by the
agencies' research. That in turn seems to be a partial legacy of a push
to deinstitutionalise the mentally ill a decade or so ago - a
well-intentioned move that overlooked the need for many to continue
taking medication under supervision.
The State Government is now acknowledging that there has to be a better
mix of services for such people - and that where this is an underlying
cause of homelessness, it can't simply be left to the hostels to manage.
Yet its still a long way off fixing the problem.
Meanwhile, the battle for the right to carve out an existence in the
inner city is only set to escalate with the Olympics drawing closer.
Although no-one anticipates the heavy-handed expulsion of the homeless
that the Atlanta Games witnessed, market pressures here are set to wreak
their own kind of havoc.
Sydney City Council's Homeless Persons Information Centre reports a huge
surge in people seeking crisis accommodation in the city - a trebling in
the last seven years.
Last financial year, more than 30,000 people sought help from the
centre, of whom more than 10,000 were women and children.
It's a tide that's overwhelming official crisis-housing programs run by
government and agencies (known collectively as SAAP - the Supported
Accommodation Assistance Program). In 1997, nearly half those seeking
SAAP places across NSW had to be turned away.
Most of the overflow has been sopped up by Sydney City Council's
so-called "brokerage" program, which involves council subcontracting
church agencies to purchase beds for the homeless in places such as
low-budget hotels or hostels, boarding houses, and even caravan parks.
But while the brokerage program is hugely valuable, it deals in options
of last resort. And there are signs these may be drying up as the
Olympics approach.
A lot of cheap city boarding houses have closed because they cannot keep
up with new fire or other government regulations. The remaining owners
of low-cost accommodation have a huge incentive to cash in on the Games.
Some will upgrade and convert to backpackers' or boutique hotels. Others
will just hold out to see what rates they can command from desperate visitors.
The Homeless Persons Information Centre says already its becoming
difficult to pre-book private accommodation in the lead-up to the Games.
The advocacy group Shelter backs this, saying the first warning bells
sounded with this year's Mardi Gras, when festival-goers booked out all
the cheap rooms close to the city.
According to Shelter's Rod Plant, "It appears the brokerage agencies
couldn't find emergency accommodation anywhere inside the
Parramatta-Liverpool ring. Come the Olympics, the church-run hostels
won't cope and the brokerage agencies won't be able to compete on the
market. We might see whole families on the street - something we haven't
seen before in Sydney."
Even now, with the brokerage program offering a temporary safety net,
some fall through the mesh. The big hostels privately admit that often
their only fallback is to get Missionbeat to take homeless men to
railway stations for the night. At least, they will be in a well-lit and
relatively safe place. Those sleeping rough can pay with their lives,
like the pensioner bashed to death in a makeshift bed near The Domain
last month.
Clearly there will need to be a huge co-ordination of State and agency
efforts if a social catastrophe is to be avoided during the Games. Money
is part, though not all of the problem. The Commonwealth-State SAAP
program has had no real increase in funding for five years. Churches say
donations are dropping off.
Unless the shortfall is made up, a concerted effort put into
strengthening the safety net and inner-city communities rediscover their
patience and tolerance, Sydney will be seeing more and more desperate
people calling the streets their home.
Booth takes some solace in the card he received from one former "client"
on Monday. "I was stranded and knew nobody and you came to my rescue,"
it said. "I am now working and have found a nice place to live."
--
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