Vivian Curry (left) and Adrian Melham (right) know all too well the debilitating experience of homelessness.
Vivian, aged 44, has spent the last 25 years of his life sleeping rough and has the physical scars to show for it.
Recently, however, things took a turn for the better for Vivian and Adrian when they came into contact with outreach workers from Micah Projects, working on the 50 Lives 50 Homes campaign.
As a result, they’re now both enjoying all the comforts of home as tenants of Brisbane Common Ground in Hope Street, South Brisbane.
They receive regular, ongoing support from specialized housing workers, and can take advantage of a number of in-house activities to help make their transition to secure housing a permanent one.
The 50 Lives, 50 Homes Campaign, launched in June 2010 as a collaboration between Micah Projects and a number of Government Departments and Community Agencies, reached a new milestone this week with the announcement that 211 people previously experiencing homelessness had now been successfully housed since the campaign started.
“It’s a great result,” says Micah Projects Coordinator Karyn Walsh, “and it shows that with proper support and an innovative approach, even people experiencing chronic, long-term homelessness can make the transition to secure, permanent housing.”
In an Australian first, the campaign built a registry of the people sleeping rough in Brisbane, their names, photos, housing, healthcare and support service needs. People were then prioritised according to their length of homelessness, presenting health conditions and other factors such as age. Initially, 118 of the 231 people surveyed were identified as being at risk of dying on the streets.
“We took the Australian Government’s White Paper’s 2020 targets to reduce homelessness very seriously,” says Karyn.
“The targets state that as a nation we commit to halving homelessness and offering supported accommodation to all people who sleep rough by 2020.
“We thought that if we focused on housing the people of whom it was said, ‘they couldn’t be housed; they don’t want to be housed’, then we could house anyone. Given the right housing with the right support services to meet the needs of individuals, anyone can make the move into housing,” says Karyn.
The collaboration between community service providers and government was also a first for Brisbane and contributed greatly to the campaign’s success. 50 Lives 50 Homes has also received strong support from businesses, schools, community groups, individuals and families who have donated furniture and household items to help furnish homes.
Photo by Katie Bennett www.embellysh.com.au
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