It is difficult to say how many people sleep on the streets in Melbourne each night, but the official statistics indicate that 24,000 people are homeless, half of them under the age of 24. According to Chris Middendorp, the co-ordinator of the central division of Sacred Heart Mission, in a recent article in The Age, homelessness is now scandalously out of control. Welfare services are unable to cope with the demand, and many people seeking temporary accommodation are turned away.
Middendorp describes the experience of a homeless man who recently obtained a room in an inner-city boarding house. The rent was $160 per week – almost the entire amount of a single person’s Centrelink payment – for a bed in a very small room with “a broken window, a stinking mattress, and a shared bathroom with limited hot water, a toilet without a seat and no toilet paper.” This is a typical establishment catering to the homeless, and the other occupants are frequently suffering from varying degrees of mental and physical illness, exhibiting varying levels of intoxication and violence.
Even if a homeless person is not initially suffering from mental illness, living in this type of environment typically leads to at least some form of mental illness. The environment is certainly not conducive to the recovery of a person who has an addiction to drugs or alcohol. Many homeless people are poorly educated and do not have the skills necessary to speak out about their situation. This week is National Homeless Persons’ Week.