This is the human face of Qld’s housing crisis – and why we should feel ashamed
While Brisbane is being lauded as one of the world’s best places to visit, a parallel universe exists less than a kilometre from State Parliament and the government’s shiny “Tower of Power”. What’s more, it’s being played out in the shadow of half-empty high-rise apartment towers. Rebecca Levingston meets those most affected:
Cantrell, who lives beneath Brisbane's Go-Between Bridge because he and his partner have found it impossible to find rental accommodation. (Photo: Rebecca Levingston).
There’s a new neighbourhood I’ve been visiting lately.
New people are moving in. Young guys and a couple of girls. An old Aboriginal bloke called Rod who loves playing guitar but he keeps hocking it. He’s got a great laugh. It reminds me of Jonathan Thurston. Deep and wheezy all at the same time.
There’s Roxy. She’s a grandmother. She was a hairdresser and a carpenter. But these days she says she’s retired.
A couple called Bella and Cartrell. They’re looking for work. But it’s hard to get a job, when you don’t have a house. And it’s even harder to get a house when you don’t have a job.
You see, these strangers, now friends are part of a growing community of people who are homeless and live under the Go-Between bridge in Brisbane. Simultaneously sheltered and exposed.
Pigeons help themselves to food scraps amongst the stained mattresses on the ground. Blankets denote bed ownership. Shopping trolleys and umbrellas give some privacy. When it rains, people have to relocate to the underbelly of the bridge. In the daytime, ibises stalk the perimeter looking for trash. Rats scuttle around at night. This is Brisbane, Queensland, the Sunshine State. One the best places in the world according to Time Magazine.
Roxy tells me that as the sun sets she watches the high-rise apartments across the river to see how many lights get turned on. Who’s home? Who’s not. She says she wishes there was a place for everyone. In fact, she reckons there is space, but we don’t seem to want to share.
I find it astounding that she’s so gentle in the way she contemplates how humans create a hierarchy with homes. She’s not angry. She’s just disappointed.
You can have two homes. But Roxy can’t have one. Some can can have three houses and Rod’s gotta live by the river.
That’s some positively negative gearing.
A holiday house for a fortunate family. No bathroom for some unlucky kids. Are we ok with that?
Bella and Cartrell are only young but can’t go back to their family. It’s not an option. It sounds complicated and Cartrell hesitates to share too much about what happened last time he tried to go home.
The couple were staying briefly at a backpackers but got kicked out for letting a 14 year old girl in with them. I wonder if they saw themselves in her. Can you imagine being a child and you can’t go home to a bedroom plastered with posters, pillows and teenage trinkets?
Sometimes that means sleeping rough. Sometimes it means stealing. Sometimes it means violence. It always means fear.
Youth crime crisis we hear. Harsher sentences. Sure, but how about more houses? For young and old.
I spoke to Maggie Shambrook last week from the Housing Older Women movement. Maggie told me about women “living precariously” as she put it. Dangerously close to homelessness.
400,000 of our mothers and grandmothers is how she wants Australians to think about it. The shame of not having a home is crushing. So the problem is largely hidden.
Some women sleep in cars, many under houses. One killed herself. Maggie told me of a woman was so distraught at losing the place she’d been renting, she ended her life. When Maggie said those words, I lost all of mine.
I think about how unwanted she must have felt. Unloved and unprotected.
Un-Australian don’t you think?
