Helping the homeless in Brisbane

In 2005 I was in Brisbane, Australia, working for Big Issue Magazine. It was here that I got to help the homeless get off the streets.

After returning from China in 2003, I ended up living on the streets in Brisbane for a short while. Then I found The Big Issue, and started selling the magazine on the streets of Brisbane’s CBD.

We bought each copy of the magazine for $2 and sold it to customers for $4, meaning we made $2 profit on each magazine we sold. On a good day, one could make $200, which was quite substantial in 2005.

After my first day, I was able to move into a hotel room, and after a couple of weeks, I could afford an apartment.

While selling the magazine, I met businesswoman Sarina Russo, and after a conversation with her and Big Issue, she agreed to sponsor me to work for the magazine helping others to get off the streets.

She donated $10,000 to Big Issue, and they used this money to pay me three days a week to work in their Brisbane office for six months. During this time, we helped 16 people get off the streets and into permanent accommodation. We also helped many others get into shelters and refuges.

We developed a system whereby a streetie could come to us in the morning, and we could have them into an apartment by the next day, or sometimes even the same day.

This involved agreements with Centrelink, Department of Housing, Rental Bonds Board, Brisbane Housing Corporation and St Vincent De Paul. All applications could be done by fax, rather than having to travel all over Brisbane and attend face-to-face meetings and long waits with each organisastion.

Towards the end of the six month contract, I was approached by Senator Andrew Bartlett’s office, and persuaded to go and work with him. I was basically doing the same sort of work, but on a national scale.

My work got the attention of Vodafone, and I was offered $50,000 a year to continue working for Big Issue under the Vodafone World of Difference Program, with a $25,000 expense account. I was one of four successfull applicants from over 500 submissions made to Vodafone for this program, and the first Queenslander to be selected.

Unfortunately, due to Big Issue refusing to agree to Vodafone’s requirements that the money was only to be used for my employment, the contract was never signed. Big Issue wanted the money to be used for their own administrative staff’s salaries.

During the same time, I was actually working for Big Issue again, and was assaulted by one of the vendors. I didn’t lay charges, as the guy had mental health problems, but I couldn’t work for six months, during which time I was on worker’s compensation.

I returned to work for Senator Bartlett for another couple of months, under the Worker’s Compensation Host Employment Program, with Workcover Queensland paying my salary.

My work with Big Issue and Senator Bartlett opened my eyes to how the homeless are exploited in Australia. While many of the staff and volunteers are well-meaning, they do not understand what it means to be homeless. They also have insufficient training to deal with their clientele.

At the same time, the people in high-level administration of these organisations are on extremely high salaries, and have little to no contact with the people they are supposed to be helping.

Add to that that the processes they have designed to get people off the streets are extremely complicated, and have low success rates.

I also came across quite a few people skimming money off the top of these organisations, and putting it into their own pockets. I made a number of reports to police and politicians, but nobody seemed interested.

This is a sector that needs to be looked into. People are profitting off the sufferring of Australia’s most vulnerable, and nobody is doing anything about it.

Not-for-profit organisations do not have to submit financial reports the same as any other organisation, so there is massive rorting going on with almost no regulation.

The federal and state governments need to change this. These organisations need to be made as accountable as any other organisation, and transparency about how money is spent is needed.

The clientele are virtually powerless. About 30% are suffering from mental illness, and many of the others are ignored when they make complaints, or simply refused help from the organisations they complain about.

The reason for this is simple: addressing homelessness does not win votes for politicians. The homeless vote is insignificant to them. Some address the issue publicly, but it is mostly just lip service.

That doesn’t mean that everybody should stop supporting charities. They do some good work, but we need to seek out and expose those that are rorting the system. Only the police and governments can do that, and they need to start doing it.

And if you see a Big Issue vendor selling magazines on the street, stop and buy one. You can be 100% guaranteed that the money is going to them, and not some highly paid manager.

Craig Hill is a Brisbane-based Social Justice Campaigner, Writer, Teacher and Business Consultant. He has campaigned for social justice in Australia, promoted human rights in China and worked with the homeless in Honolulu. He holds a Graduate Certificate in Education and a degree in Management.