Queensland charity Rosies and the St Vincent de Paul’s Society are seeing unprecedented levels of need as the housing crisis deepens across the state this Homelessness Week. Source: The Catholic Leader.
Rosies chief executive officer Jayne Shallcross said their teams were seeing more people reaching out for help than ever before.
Numbers had skyrocketed 30 per cent on average across all outreaches with some of those outreaches rising by as much as 50 per cent.
Ms Shallcross said a lot of the people they encountered at their street vans had never experienced homelessness before.
“We’ve got a lot more families, young people, older women that are now presenting at outreach,” she said.
They had also been fielding more calls from people who were concerned about people sleeping rough in their community parks and areas – communities, she said, that had not usually been strongly impacted by homelessness.
She said their supplies were “flying off the shelf” and they would be looking at ways to expand their outreach to meet the growing need.
St Vincent de Paul Society state president Trish McMahon said what they knew from the 2021 Census was there were about 22,000 people experiencing homelessness in Queensland.
The numbers had grown a lot since that census, she said.
Ms McMahon works out of the Spring Hill support centre, where they support about 200 people a month, with the majority experiencing homelessness.
Queensland’s housing crisis had many causes, she said, but a lack of sufficient social housing was one of the most important.
Ms McMahon was hopeful for the Miles Government’s plan to build a million new homes by 2046 – which included 53,000 dwellings earmarked for social housing.
Part of the plan was 500 homes in five years, she said, but that was only a “Band-Aid” solution.
FULL STORY
Catholic outreach feels the pinch under ‘astronomical’ housing crisis as Homelessness Week kicks off (By Joe Higgins, The Catholic Leader)
