Homelessness in Australia: An Introduction

By Chris Chamberlain, Guy Johnson and Catherine Robinson

This book explores the complexities of homelessness in Australia—and the future policies likely to improve the situation. What is homelessness? Who counts as homeless? Whose responsibility is homelessness? In Homelessness in Australia, experts in the sector offer timely insights into the history, causes, and extent of homelessness in the country, and the future policy directions most likely to have a positive impact. Covering issues such as gender, Indigenous homelessness, family violence, young people, and the effects of trauma, the book aims to improve both the understanding of the complexities involved and the outcomes for those experiencing homelessness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Mar 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9781742241869

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INTRODUCTION

Chris Chamberlain, Guy Johnson and Catherine Robinson

This book establishes homelessness as a core area of concern across a range of academic disciplines, government departments and institutions, and community sector organisations. While specialists within academia, government policy units, peak bodies and the service sector provide leadership in addressing homelessness, the emerging message is clear: homelessness is everyone’s business. This fact, which is growing increasingly obvious, generates new responsibilities for professionals in a diverse range of workplaces: from hospitals and prisons, to schools, local councils and emergency services.

This book provides an overview of current knowledge of homelessness in Australia. Each chapter makes a stand-alone contribution to a broader bank of knowledge about the various causes and effects of homelessness. As outlined in more detail at the end of this introduction, the chapters capture a snapshot of the scale of homelessness in Australia, consider the contexts in which homelessness is generated, and analyse the dynamics that shape different experiences of homelessness. The chapters also examine the history and future of homelessness research, policy and practice, and explore homelessness as an issue that intersects with many areas of social, cultural and economic inequality. This format makes the book suitable both for readers new to the issue of homelessness and for those already working to reduce homelessness in Australia.

There are several important themes that cut across the perspectives on homelessness contained in each of the chapters. A central theme is the continued need to engage critically with homelessness as a particular life experience that emerges over time in ever-changing social, cultural, financial, political and geographical circumstances.

The evolving nature of homelessness is further complicated by the fact that people become homeless under diverse circumstances, experience homelessness differently, and receive varied support responses with wide-ranging outcomes. This means that by staying closely attuned to current experiences of homelessness, our knowledge will be more current and our responses better informed. This is crucial if ending homelessness in Australia is our goal. In particular, a better understanding of the limited mechanisms through which the experiences, needs and hopes of homeless people are represented is central. An essential platform for advancing understanding of, and responses to, homelessness lies in being able to identify how homelessness is defined and ‘made real’ in different historical, political and practical contexts, for different purposes and with different outcomes. This critical perspective demands both an appreciation of what is included in a particular representation of homelessness by policy makers, social services, researchers and local communities, and continuous vigilance about who is excluded and why.

The struggle with the complexity of homelessness as a social issue is not specific to the Australian context; it is a universal issue. Internationally, most scholarly books, articles and government reports on the subject devote a chapter or more to explaining the difficult process of defining homelessness, the history and politics of this process, and then end with a working definition. The ambiguity of homelessness has led to much debate about the usefulness of the term ‘homeless’, and about the processes and results of counting how many people are homeless. It is generally acknowleged, however, that definitions are needed. As Chamberlain and Mackenzie (1998, p. 19) ask, ‘if homelessness is impossible to define, why should governments act to alleviate this nebulous condition?’

Challenging questions that can be used in engaging with any material on homelessness include: What is homelessness? Who counts as homeless? Whose responsibility is homelessness? As will be discovered, the answers to these questions always vary. However, examining all texts – whether government policies, service charters or academic articles – in relation to these key questions can help the reader remain conscious of the contrasting ways in which different homeless people, scholars, governments, advocates and service providers imagine and articulate the problems of, and solutions to, homelessness.

Divergent viewpoints on what constitutes homelessness, who may be considered homeless, and who has responsibility for ending homelessness should not be considered problematic. Robust and refreshed dialogue about homelessness is precisely the means by which refined understanding and intervention is likely to emerge. In Australia, public and policy debate on homelessness has for some time wrestled with the value of holistic understandings of homelessness that focus on the dual need for support and housing, particularly in the context of long-term homelessness. In the past there has been considerable tension between those who viewed homelessness as an issue requiring individual support and those who saw homelessness primarily as a housing issue. There is consensus, however, that holistic understandings of homelessness sensitise us to the importance of both support and housing. When people lose their housing, not only do they lose their shelter, but they also lose a sense of safety, belonging and community connectedness central to the experience of ‘home’.

This last point highlights one of the key issues of this book: that ideas of ‘home’ are inherently central to the way homelessness is defined, understood and responded to. Critically identifying what different authors assume ‘home’ to be is essential in engaging with their definitions of homelessness and the different issues they subsequently nominate as keys to resolving homelessness.

At one level, homelessness is easily defined: anyone without regular access to conventional accommodation could be considered homeless (Rossi et al. 1987, p. 1). While people sleeping on the streets, in parks or in squats are clearly homeless, the issue becomes complicated when we consider what ‘conventional accommodation’ and ‘regular access’ actually means. Are, for instance, people in emergency accommodation homeless? What about people doubling-up with family and friends temporarily? Are people in prisons, institutions and refuges homeless? Are people who live in overcrowded or sub-standard accommodation homeless? What is adequate accommodation? What about those who feel unsafe in their home?

These questions highlight the problem of where to draw the line between the housed, homed and the homeless. This problem is not just an academic exercise. Depending on how homelessness is defined, the size and composition of this population can vary dramatically, and this in turn can influence policy focus and program design (Neil & Fopp 1992). Although the struggle over how best to define homelessness is an ongoing one, a recurring focus is debate about whether to define homelessness according to ‘objective’ dimensions of housing or to also include in definitions ‘subjective’ dimensions of housing understood to constitute home.

Those taking an objectivist position emphasise the physical aspects of housing. These relate to the degree of shelter and security a housing structure provides. Objective definitions often focus on specific housing arrangements. For example, the cultural definition (Chamberlain & Mackenzie 1992), used in a number of chapters, is an objective definition. It maintains that anyone who lives in accommodation that falls below the minimum community standard (a small rented flat with a private bathroom and kitchen) is homeless.

Such definitions of homelessness are crucial in enabling the statistical estimation of the size of homeless population as well as movements into and out of this population. In turn, this kind of statistical analysis underpins policy decisions about funding levels, service design and the geographical location of services.

Those taking a subjectivist perspective are interested in the personal meaning attributed to living spaces. The subjectivist position is a person-orientated approach that takes account of people’s perceptions. The core idea underlying the subjectivist position is that a home is more than a physical shelter – it is a locale that provides safety and security for its occupants, it is a place of cultural expression, a place of belonging and a nexus for social and cultural engagement. For those taking a subjectivist perspective, homelessness is defined by the absence of these affective and relational possibilities.

As a number of chapters make clear, the ideal of home as a space of community connection and self-realisation has been markedly absent in the homes that homeless people have experienced as children, young people and adults. For many, home represents a place of violence and abuse, a place of damaging relationships that need to be escaped. Thus, from a subjectivist point of view, it is vital to come to grips with home as both an enriching and safe place that all should have a right to construct in their individualised ways, and to engage with the enduring effects that home as a site of abuse, terror and marginalisation give rise to. In short, the paradoxical ways in which home can constitute both the solution to, and the cause of, homelessness demand a nuanced response.

From diverse perspectives, the chapters of this book contribute to how we understand and conceptualise the complexity of home and homelessness. As each chapter considers a different aspect of homelessness, what becomes clear is that people experiencing homelessness are a much more heterogeneous population than is commonly imagined. Homelessness is no longer an issue that only affects single men on ‘skid row’, as was widely thought in the 1950s and 1960s. Rather, the issues and experiences that characterise contemporary homelessness are diverse and multifaceted, and policy and service responses must reflect this. For readers new to the area of homelessness, our hope is that this book provides a clear picture of this diversity and its implications, as well as the importance of adopting a critical perspective on all representations of homelessness.

The book is organised in three parts. The first part considers the development of policy designed to address homelessness in Australia, the causes of homelessness, as well as mobility in and out of the homeless population. Chapter 1 critically reviews the development of homelessness policy in Australia, from the start of the nineteenth century to recent times. It explores the question of whether policy approaches to homelessness have been ‘benign neglect’ or ‘regulation and control’. Chapter 2 grapples with the causes of homelessness. It critically examines structural and individual explanations, concluding that neither approach is adequate on its own. Chapter 3 focuses on the flow of people into and out of the homeless population. It points out that while some people will have a short experience of homelessness, for others it will be a long-term experience.

The second part of the book explores various experiences of homelessness itself. Chapter 4 examines the Australian debate about defining and counting. Enumerating the homeless population is crucial because it identifies the scale of the problem and produces practical information about which services are needed and where. Chapter 5 focuses on the ways in which gender informs the lived experience of homelessness. It draws attention to the value of intersectional analysis as a way of understanding the varying experiences of men and women. Chapter 6 takes up the issue of youth homelessness, pointing out that there is considerable diversity in the reasons why young people become homeless and in their experiences in the homeless population. Chapter 7 argues that as Australia’s population ages, the issue of homelessness is becoming increasingly common among the aged, but that homeless policy responses for older people are not well developed. Chapter 8 analyses homelessness among Indigenous Australians, highlighting historical and contemporary factors that make Indigenous homelessness distinctive.

Chapter 9 canvasses the issue of family violence, with the authors demonstrating that such violence is overwhelmingly experienced by women, and is a principal reason why many women experience homelessness. Chapter 10 takes up the issue of mental illness, cognitive impairment and dual disability, and how these issues intersect with homelessness and the prison system. Chapter 11 focuses on the issue of trauma, in childhood and adult life. It argues that trauma informs people’s experience of homelessness in specific ways and requires policy makers and service providers to consider adopting trauma-informed approaches. Chapter 12 reviews the evidence on people experiencing long-term homelessness, and examines why policy makers have focused so much attention on this group in recent times.

The final section of the book considers contemporary policy debates. Chapter 13 considers Australia’s housing market. It argues that the privileging of home ownership in Australia confers benefits on many, but creates adverse consequences for low-income households – most experience financial hardship, some are ‘at risk’ of homelessness, and others become homeless. Finally, Chapter 14 examines the reforms in the service delivery system that have been implemented since important policy changes that took place in 2008. The authors conclude that Australian governments must address the acute shortage of affordable housing if they wish to reduce the number of homeless people.

Although each chapter can be read on its own, the book aims to provide a systematic and coherent overview of homelessness in Australia. Readers will find cross-references linking related discussion across chapters, or highlighting where similar issues have been discussed. Collaborating from different scholarly perspectives, the editors have sought to produce a collection that showcases dialogue and innovation in thinking on homelessness. Readers are invited join in this dialogue, which has as its ultimate concern the ending of homelessness in Australia.

REFERENCES

Chamberlain, C & MacKenzie, D (1998) Youth Homelessness: Early intervention and prevention, Australian Centre for Equity through Education, Sydney.

—— (1992) ‘Understanding contemporary homelessness: Issues of definition and meaning’, Australian Journal of Social Issues, 27(4), 274–97.

Neil, C and Fopp, R (1992) Homelessness in Australia: Causes and consequences, CSIRO, Melbourne.

Rossi, P, Wright, J, Fisher, G & Willis, G (1987) ‘The urban homeless: Estimating the composition and size’, Science, 235, 1336–41.

PART 1

OVERVIEW

1

HOMELESSNESS POLICY

Benign neglect or regulation and control?

Anne Coleman and Rodney Fopp

Homelessness has been part of Australian society since the British claimed the continent as terra nullius. The arrival of the colonisers signalled a new era where homelessness, regardless of fluctuations in the nation’s prosperity, became not only entrenched but also accepted. In this chapter, we will describe and analyse how and why this happened by examining a selection of the salient policies developed to address homelessness and to respond to people experiencing homelessness.

We begin by acknowledging the traditional and continuing connection of Aboriginal people to country, and the legacy of their dispossession that includes their over-representation today in every statistic on contemporary homelessness (see also Chapter 8). We then give a snapshot of homelessness policies between white settlement and Federation in 1901. This provides early instances of, and policy responses to, homelessness, including how these policies were implemented and the effects on their ‘targets’.

We next critically analyse Australia’s main consolidated policy and programmatic response to homelessness, known as the Supported Accommodation Assistance Program (SAAP). Then we briefly consider the implications of changes in homelessness policy since the introduction of the Australian Government’s new approach to homelessness and make some tentative observations about likely directions in the next decade (see also Chapter 14).

The chapter’s title poses the question of whether the policy approach to homelessness is one of benign neglect regarding the issue or one of regulation and control. We point to evidence which suggests that policy responses to homelessness have been inconsistent, see-sawing between ignoring the issue of homelessness altogether and attempting to regulate and control people experiencing homelessness. In considering this issue, we note that many of the responses intended to end homelessness involve policies that target people who have been variously referred to in policy documents and by the media as ‘rough sleepers’, ‘couch surfers’ and ‘the chronically homeless’ (see Chapter 12).

The chapter presents evidence that challenges the persistent belief that homelessness is only a result of individual failings (see Chapter 2). Rather, we draw attention to social structures that help explain homelessness and point to ways of ending it.

POLICY AND HOMELESSNESS IN EARLY AUSTRALIA

The arrival of the British changed forever the spiritual, legal and economic contexts of all Aboriginal Australians and their children across generations. Until the colonisers arrived, Aboriginal people were always ‘at home’ in their country. The arrival of the First Fleet signalled the beginning of homelessness in Australia.

At this point in time, dispersal was the unofficial policy, and the practices of dispersal included ‘moving on’ Aboriginal groups by restricting access to sources of traditional food and water, attempting to ‘bring in’ people from remote areas, and killings of Aboriginal people. Former Prime Minister Paul Keating’s 1992 Redfern Speech (Keating 1992) outlined the damage done to traditional owners, which included the loss not only of spiritual connection to the land but of the economic base on which traditional societies relied. Mick Dodson (1996), commenting on the processes of dispossession and ‘dispersal’, links these processes with ‘spiritual homelessness’ (Keys Young 1998) and explains how many Aboriginal people continue to experience feelings of loss and homelessness – even when housed. In addition to this, the lack of housing and severe overcrowding in many Aboriginal communities compounds spiritual homelessness. For these reasons, many Aboriginal people are homeless according to mainstream definitions.

Homelessness was felt, too, by many of the new eighteenth-century arrivals. The First Fleet was a ragtag collection of people sentenced to transportation, their guards, members of the army and navy, and officers. They were mainly English, Irish and Scottish. Many never returned to their homelands but built lives and died in Australia, which remained, for some, an alien and overwhelming place where they were never ‘at home’.

The white occupation of Australia saw the transplantation of British mores and values, which were reflected in the policies that were subsequently developed and implemented. Homelessness was regarded as one manifestation of poverty, and considered to be the result of individual vice and shiftlessness. For much of our post-colonial history, homelessness was seen as a result of people’s own fecklessness and policy responses to homelessness swayed between neglect of homelessness as a social issue, and regulation of homeless people by monitoring and discipline.

By the early 1800s, the colonial government’s perceived responsibility to care for the basic needs of the population had diminished and response to need became almost solely the work of charitable institutions. The objects of their charity were identified as either deserving or undeserving (Dickey 1987, pp. 12–20). By the mid-nineteenth century though, government responses were restricted to controlling and removing the destitute, the infirm and those in need of moral correction to workhouses and asylums for the insane (as they were known). Legislation and policies were aimed at controlling vagrancy, itinerancy and particular groups of people, with various states introducing legislation in the mid-1800s that criminalised activities associated with poverty and homelessness (for example, begging and being itinerant). Industrial schools were also established at this time in New South Wales, Western Australia and Victoria to house young boys deemed to be uncontrollable (Garton 1990). Schindler (2010, p. 52) comments:

The Industrial Schools can … be understood as being a mechanism for controlling the dangerous, for protecting the vulnerable or retribution for unacceptable activities. Notably, it reflected a position in which such young people were seen principally as a group which need to be governed and moulded to become compliant with the commercial needs and regulatory expectations of the time.

It can be argued that some policy responses in more recent times hark back to these earlier iterations, in that they too have been focused on individual or personal deficits while ignoring the importance of policies relating to housing, income security, the labour market and industrial relations (see Chapters 2 and 13).

DEVELOPMENTS FROM THE 1890s TO 1980s

In contrast to earlier and more contemporary times, the depressions of the 1890s and the 1930s were exceptions to the general trend of vilifying the poor (including those experiencing homelessness and living itinerant lifestyles). The appearance on city streets and country roads of people displaced and impoverished by wide-scale unemployment opened discussion about the role of government in intervening in the economy and in providing employment. The depressions also highlighted the vulnerability of tenants to homelessness through eviction and provided examples of citizens banding together to resist these evictions, often by creative means (Wheatley 1981).

In 1945, the Australian Government released its White Paper entitled Full Employment in Australia (Commonwealth of Australia 1945). This White Paper detailed what was effectively a contract between the Australian Government and its citizens: the government would provide the conditions for full employment, while male breadwinners were to take advantage of the demand for labour. After World War II, Australia entered a period of unparalleled prosperity, sometimes referred to as Australia’s golden age of welfare, which was the result of the boom triggered by the rebuilding and restructuring following the war. At this time, the central pillars of social policy were full employment and home ownership. These were viewed by governments as providing the best protection against poverty and homelessness, as well as encouraging settled and stable communities. Indeed, Jones (1972) argues that home ownership, in the absence of sustained investment in public housing, was the totality of Australia’s policy approach to housing. Amidst this prosperity, the policy silence and inactivity around homelessness was all pervasive.

It was not until the 1970s that, at the policy level, Australia rediscovered poverty. In 1973, the Working Party on Homeless Men and Women reported to the Minister for Social Security on the existence and circumstances of people experiencing homelessness. The report was significant because it established homelessness as a social issue of concern to government, and also challenged the stereotype of the homeless population as comprising only middle-aged, single, alcoholic males. New groups identified as experiencing homelessness included women escaping domestic violence and young unemployed people.

In 1974, the Homeless Persons Assistance Act came into effect – the first time the federal government had responded to homelessness as a discrete issue. The parliamentary debate that accompanied the introduction of the bill made specific reference to ‘homelessness’. Rather than including a definition of homelessness, however, the subsequent legislation contained only a definition of a ‘homeless person’. The Act contained provisions for the establishment of and funding for the Homeless Persons Assistance Program (HPAP) services. The first of the shelters for women escaping domestic violence was established in the same year. Although funded through the HPAP, initially these services were developed to respond to what was seen as a health issue for women and their children rather than to a homelessness issue.

In his election policy speech in May 1974, then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam referred to HPAP as ‘a program to help meet the material needs and raise the dignity of homeless men and women’. Noting that homelessness was a long neglected issue, he continued that the program ‘will be of benefit to any person in immediate need: to the permanently homeless, to the deserted or disturbed woman and her children, to the aboriginal or teenager in want or distress, to the battered woman or the battered child, to the single parent – in short, to anyone without support or income’ (Whitlam 1974).

At this time, the idea of dignity was a strong theme in government speeches, legislation and policy and, as an aspirational statement, it represented a significant shift from previous policy approaches. In 1978, however, a Department of Social Security review of HPAP services identified some fundamental problems (Department of Social Security 1978, p. 64). One of the significant problems outlined in the report, entitled A Place of Dignity: Report of a survey of homeless people and homeless persons assistance centres, was that the continued funding of HPAP services could at best only ameliorate the problem of homelessness.

One of the challenges for homelessness policy was the steady but unremitting appearance of ‘new’ groups identified as experiencing homelessness. These new groups include women escaping violent relationships (in the 1970s); young people (in the1980s); families with children and older Australians (early in the 1990s); people with housing affordability issues (from the late 1990s on); the working poor (in the new millennium); and most recently older single women. To respond to the appearance of new social groups, various programs responding to homelessness were incorporated into the Supported Accommodation Assistance Program, which is considered in detail in the next section.

In 1985, the Australian Department of Housing and Construction commissioned the Study into Homelessness and Inadequate Housing (Coopers & Lybrand WD Scott 1985), and in 1989 the government was advised of the increasing number of young homeless people. The influential study on which this advice was based was conducted by the Australian Human Rights Commission, which released