Has the number or profile of people accessing Wesley Mission’s homelessness services changed since the recession?
The profile of the people who are turning up in need of emergency accommodation has dramatically changed during the year. At one time the kind of person who might be in a homeless centre would probably be male and about 55-60, but now the average age is 37. And your percentages now are around 60 per cent male and 40 per cent female. The danger for us is that most of the homeless emergency provision has been developed for male clients, not females or families. We have a centre which seeks to help families that are homeless, and in that centre we’re turning away ten families every week because we just can’t house them. With many of the factors that can lead to homelessness increasing, are the goals of the Federal Government’s White Paper A Road Home realistic? I believe it is realistic to set a target like that because the cost of not dealing with homelessness is worse than the cost of dealing with it. If we don’t get a grip on the problem we’ll see increased pressure on our hospital war
