Since July this year the Maroochydore Sleepbus service has provided 423 safe sleeps for locals experiencing homelessness, and demand is so high a second bus is required solely for women and children.
This week founder Simon Rowe sat down with Mal Cayley and Dave Mclenaghan on the ‘Homes for Everyone’ podcast, and agreed more needs to be done to address the issue on both the Sunshine Coast and Australia wide.
“We’re definitely seeing a change in people. When we launched earlier this year we saw a lot of long term men and women using the service and that still happens in phases, but now we’re seeing younger, 30 and under, younger couples, 20 and under and they are much more fresh being on the streets than what we’ve experienced before,” Mr Rowe said.
“Quite often they’ve got jobs, just nowhere to live. It’s not a good reflection on us as a society and a community that we’re not doing enough.”
Currently the Maroochydore Sleepbus runs three nights a week, but as more volunteers and sponsors jump on board it is hoped that will increase to seven.
Each Sleepbus has up to 20 secure, climate controlled, individual sleep pods in twin cabins, each with a lockable door and toilet.
Mr Rowe said a good night’s sleep has a flow on effect in other parts of life.
“You’ll see these people jump on of a nighttime and in the morning they are completely different people. Quite often they say it’s the greatest sleep they’ve ever had – I needed that,” he said.
“They can then go to other agencies to help them with homelessness and they can have decent conversations because they’ve had a rest.”
Mr Rowe’s goal is to get up to 50 sleep buses on the road across Australia. As the buses are a temporary fix, he wants to create influence so he has a seat at the table to be able to push for a more permanent solution – affordable housing.
Direct Collective COO Mal Cayley said having the right people at the table is more important than ever.
“90 per cent of all rental properties in Queensland are owned by individual investors yet in the recent housing round table that saw a range of industry and community groups gather, there wasn’t one single representative of that 90 per cent, which shows they already had an agenda, they already know the things they want to work on and that’s part of the challenge,” he said.
Mr Cayley said we need to focus on increasing supply instead of putting red tape on investors.
“There’s all these additional costs and pressure on property investors and you’ve got to keep in mind that when you look at rent over the last 20 years, they seem to have grown a lot over the last couple of years, but if you look over that time rents have grown at half the rate of the CPI so it’s not like they’re rolling in cash,” he said.
“You can’t solve a problem through injustice, and what injustice is is taking rights from one person to give to another. You’ve got to have shared rights.”
The Homes for Everyone initiative is calling for people to put their digital hand up to join the growing voice that’s saying, ‘enough is enough’ and real housing solutions need to be delivered.
Take 15 seconds to fill in the form at homesforeveryone.com.au so that the collective voice of the community can get the decision makers to pay attention and see real, positive changes achieved.
The Homes For Everyone podcast highlights the dire state of the Sunshine Coast housing market and the unexpected stories of heartbreak from the current crisis.
Listen to the Homes For Everyone podcast on Spotify, iHeartRadio, or visit homesforeveryone.com.au
