POLITICS INFOCUS Homeless not hopeless + Suicide or murder?

Homelessness is reaching further into the nation's suburban heartland, with emergency accommodation services reporting unprecedented demand from everyday families unable to pay mortgages and rent. The need for beds is so great that some welfare groups are giving away sleeping bags.

In the NSW city of Newcastle, three destitute families have pitched tents in friends' backyards, and a mother and her two children were reportedly living under canvas in a park. Hostel and emergency shelter providers routinely turn away people seeking help due to a lack of facilities.

At Newcastle's Wesley City Mission, client services manager Tony Scully is handing out three sleeping bags a week because he cannot place any more people in its 94 bed-sitter style units. The waiting list stretches to at least three months. Increasingly, the calls for help are coming from what Mr Scully calls "everyday families". In most cases, they had been unable to pay the mortgage or rent, and had nowhere else to go.

Last week it was a couple and their four children, who had been living in a car after the father lost his job, fell behind with home repayments and the bank foreclosed. "People who have been working, driving a car and doing pretty well for themselves are now knocking on our door," Mr Scully said.

He is still trying to trace the homeless woman he heard about last week, who had pitched a tent in a park in nearby Lake Macquarie with her two young children. Mr Scully said three other families were living in wretched circumstances in the backyards of friends in Newcastle. Nearly half of the 70 people who attended the mission's drop-in centre were sleeping rough in parks or squats, and for many all he could offer was a sleeping bag.


Complete article : http://www.acctv.com.au/articledetail.asp?id=5708

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• kevin
• rudd
• malcolm
• mccain
• obama
• turnbull
• Australian
• christian
• lobby
• homeless
• homelessness
• Nietzke
• phillip
• euthanasia

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