I 'm in contact with many Welfare Agencies every week who refer people for crisis accommodation however there are a number of Victorian State Government Legislative roadblocks which discriminate against families and singles getting into accommodation this Winter.
The main problem this year is that the agencies have run out of Federal money [except to fund their own salaries] to help fund those in real crisis situation.
The other problems relate to the Permit system of classing any house a Rooming House if 4 or more unrelated people live in them.... this excludes taking Women and Children because they usually number more than 3 and the housing become non compliant even though the planning Act allows these properties not needing to be identified in order to protect the security of the abused women seeking a secret location away from their abusive partners.
You might jump to the conclusion that singles would have an advantage to Women with Children however this is not the case as 3 in number do not make it a profitable venture due to high cost of rents/ interest rates , rates & taxes AND utilities AND Administration time which is often not valued by Government Law makers when assessing this business. There would be more accommodation for both groups if the State Government were more honest about the way they treated Freehold property owners which in turn affects the provision of Crisis Housing in Victoria which should not be the sole domain of the State Govt . which has never succeeded trying to do it on its own.
We strongly believe the State Govt should stop trying to solve all the problems on their own when clealy they have failed and let the private sector be permitted to operate accommodation more freely without all the red tape the socialists insist there must be so as to keep the business in govt hands and this can be achieved by increasing the meaning of a Rooming House to 6 or more people at the very least as this would release several hundred homes to become available for more family crisis & single person accommodation. One stroke of the pen by Daniel Andrews ALP might solve half the problem within months.
Now back to the title of my thread... Swags For Feral Tenants...... I have often suggested to the Welfare Agencies that if they get a gut feeling or know the applicant seeking accommodation is a violent person then they should give them a Swag and suggest they go bush into crown land. The agencies especially the Church Agencies are usually shocked by this suggestion however I do also suggest to them that if they would not want to offer applicants a room in their own homes then they should not be referring anti social people to us. We have given the Salvos many chances at reforming their referral procedures but the ignore us and keep referring some of the worst criminally minded people who because of their bad behaviour get evicted quite regularly out of other accommodation. The religious churches have imo have misguided beliefs that all the homeless need a leg up when they must know that many of the homeless have in some cases become responsible for their own homelessness because of their bad behaviour towards other house mates or family members.
The Salvos deal with a higher number of people leaving jails who have not been fully rehabilitated for release into the community. We have seen many recent examples of people getting parole without being fully rehabilitated and then going onto commit some pretty serious offences including murder. The salvos seem to feel duty bound to keep referring these types of people as they feel they deserve a leg up but imo they don't deserve having a representative prepared to lie to crisis accommodation providers when they know they have a proven record of anti social behaviour or substance abuse and trying to sneak them into group accommodation where other more vulnerable people including women may reside.
IMO these anti-social people should be given a swag and sent on their way to live in the cold bush in a swag to hopefully reflect on why no one wants to live with them including their own families. Unfortunately some of these people end up getting accommodation in public housing which usually house many more vulnerable people living in close proximity and cause more grief to more people than you could possibly imagine.
Example a Woman aged 64 & daughter 26 though all their problems would be solved when offered a new apartment in Prahran in Melbourne after living for years in central city Rooming Houses full of men many they considered undesirables. Problem is that the Public Housing estates are also actually concentration camps full of not only vulnerable people but the oppressors of those vulnerable people like illicit dealers and aggressive people with mental health issues, un-rehabilitated people on parole, convicted sex offenders etc. Every time these women left their apartment they had to leave together because there was this mentally deranged person who would chase the two frightened woman which the police could do nothing about and the staff at Human Services thought it was funny and could not help. There is more to this story but the 2 women had to escape the "good" accommodation and now live in safer but more expensive accommodation in NSW. We show some few examples of the typical problem homeless person moving from crisis to crisis accommodation in his blog and later I will put in some pictures soon.
Many homeless do have mental health issues, however the prison system keeps giving bail to people who cant control their sexual urges as seen on TV in Melbourne recently as prime examples and the resultant death of victims.
The Maroondah Hospital in Victoria keeps ringing us up wanting us to take some of their cured patients who they wont release unless they have somewhere to live, however many are not in our non medical opinions ready for release but their hospital beds are costing $800 per day they say and they need those beds freed up for the next lot of cases coming in. Some we have accepted after assurances that they were ok to live with others have had to be sent back, some with police assistance and CAT Team.
I blame Jeff Kennett Vic to some degree when in 1990's he sold off a number of mental health hospitals & institutions closing beds and facilities for some of the chronically mentally ill; so now many are wandering the streets homeless and unable to look after themselves. The welfare agencies try but cant cope with the variety of problem people suffering all manner of mental illnesses. I will give talks to anyone interested in this sector. my blog is gillysrooms.blogspot.com. no pictures yet but will one day when I put more examples
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