Re: Please wake up your idea Balakrishnan

even with all these problems the Australian system is
much better than Singapore. yes it is very expensive
to own homes in the city but those in the remote areas
are still cheap. some can still be bought for less than
A$50,000. There are also rent subsidy. Welfare payment
is a given. Free medical is a given. There is also government
old age pension. Go to this web site to see all the welfare
help available for the poor and needy.

http://www.centrelink.gov.au/


"Lobert" <Lobert@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:f1tq96$dba$2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
truth. wrote:
"Lobert" <Lobert@xxxxxxx> wrote in message


you hide down under, if you don't compare Singapore to down under, where
else you want to compare ?

by any standard, the behaviour and attitude of the
officers are wrong and they r not fit to do that type of job.
perhaps that is the way the pap multi$million nincompoops
wanted it. they wanted to embarass people from seeking
help as they r so unwilling to help Singaporeans in need.
there are hundreds of $billions sitting there while Singaporeans
are crying for help. looks like these greedy nincompoops
are keeping the $billion for themselves.


Welfare reports document increasing homelessness
in Australia

Three recent reports by charities reveal that
growing numbers of low-income earners cannot meet
the costs of housing in Australia, and are
becoming either officially homeless, forced to
seek assistance from agencies and charitable
organisations, or part of a wider ?hidden
homeless? population, moving from place to place
without a stable home.

Rising rents, severe shortages of public housing
and increased demands for crisis accommodation
have meant that thousands of young people,
families and elderly people are being turned away
from housing services and left to fend for
themselves on the streets because there is nowhere
else for them to go.

Many thousands more ?hidden homeless? are camping
in caravans, cars or squats, or are sleeping on
the spare beds or sofas of friends and relatives.

According to the Wesley Mission report, The Faces
of Homelessness, the homeless have changed
significantly over the past two decades. ?The old,
derelict wino on the park bench has been joined
by; younger men, unemployed and hopeless; by the
confused and mentally ill, frightened by the pace
of activity surrounding them; by women and
children, desperate to escape violent and
destructive domestic situations; by young people,
cast off by families who can't cope or don't care.?

While number of homeless people in all categories
is increasing, the fastest growing group is
families with children, who now constitute one
third of the total. The lack of affordable housing
combined with the scarcity of crisis accommodation
has created a ?roving population of homeless
families? who move ?between shelters, street life
and squatting?.

The services available to homeless people are
being stretched far beyond their capacity. Funding
to the Crisis Accommodation Program has remained
static since 1994, and is projected to remain at
the same level through to 2002-3.

As a result, far more people are turned away than
assisted. Supported Accommodation Assistance
Program (SAAP) figures indicate that in 1996-1997
an estimated 147,000 people used homeless services
across Australia, but a further 304,000 requests
for support and accommodation were not met. By
1998-99, the number assisted had risen to 163,000,
an average of 16,500 a day.

Another charity, Mission Australia, estimates that
this could be only one-fifth of the actual number
of people without a permanent home. It said the
true dimensions of the hidden homeless problem
were unknown, but anecdotal evidence suggested
that most were youth, women, families, Aborigines,
immigrants and refugees.

In NSW, Australia's most populous state, 23,515
people were helped by SAAP services in 1997-1998,
while an estimated 36,500 were turned away, an
increase of 28 percent from the previous year. In
1999, the numbers seeking assistance rose by
another 24.8 percent.

Sydney, the state capital, is the worst affected.
The Homeless Persons Information Centre referred
4,173 people to crisis accommodation in 1994. By
1997, this had risen to 9,460 and in 1998 to
14,196?an increase of 340 percent in four years.
Despite the huge leap in demand, the number of
beds available in Sydney for homeless men
decreased by more than half from 808 in 1994 to
370 in 1997.

A volunteer from the Nightpatrol food van operated
by St Vincent de Paul told the WSWS he had seen a
significant jump in the number of people regularly
visiting the van, which serves sandwiches and
coffee every night to homeless people around
inner-Sydney.

?There has been an increase in the last eight
years, and particularly in the last three to four.
When we first began here, 10 to 15 people used to
come to the van in this spot (Martin Place)?now
there are 70. The people coming to us tend to be
younger, and we're hearing more about gamblers now
who gamble everything away.

?The services have also changed. There are fewer
crisis beds available. It used to be possible for
us to ring up and get a bed for someone, but now
all the hostels are full by the afternoon.?


Rising housing costs

Homelessness is directly related to the rising
cost of housing. A St Vincent de Paul report,
Roofs Over Heads, found housing costs ?to be a
major contributing factor to the creation and
perpetuation of disadvantage in Australia?.

The National Housing Strategy benchmark for
housing affordability is 25-30 percent of income,
but the report indicates that people seeking
assistance from St Vincent de Paul spend an
average of 38 percent of their income on rent.

The housing crisis is greatest in capital cities
such as Sydney, where rents have increased
significantly in recent years. People in major
cities receiving welfare benefits are often forced
to spend over 45 percent of their payments on
rent. An estimated 11 percent of St Vincent de
Paul's clients pay over 50 percent of their income
on housing, while some families are paying a
staggering 70 percent of their income to keep a
roof over their heads.

The report provides a case study of one family on
the Single Parent Pension?a pregnant mother and
four children under the age of 8. The family
receives $1,056.68 per fortnight and $700 goes
toward rent.

According to the report, home ownership is no
longer a possibility for many. Figures from the
Australian Bureau of Statistics show that the
proportion of people who own or are paying off a
home has fallen for the first time since the
1940s. This is not surprising given that 25
percent of low-income households in NSW report
that they are regularly unable to afford
essentials such as food, clothing and transport.

Increasingly, only those on substantial incomes
can buy a home. The mean weekly income for those
with mortgages is $358 higher than for those who rent.

Yet, while more people are unable to afford
private rental accommodation, public housing
funding has been slashed over the past two
decades. In 1999, Shelter NSW calculated that $231
million had been cut from public housing
nationally over the previous five years. Since
then, the 1999-2003 Commonwealth-State Housing
Agreement has further reduced the funds available
to the states by $10 million per year.

The federal and state governments have attempted
to justify these cuts by claiming that private
rental subsidies are their top priority, and they
are now committed to providing housing assistance
to those in ?greatest need?. The only result is
that private landlords are prospering while there
is less long-term accommodation available and
fewer people are receiving assistance.

It is now not unusual for people living in poverty
to wait over five years for public housing. There
are nearly 100,000 families on the NSW waiting
list and another 12 households are added to this
list every day. Despite this chronic shortage, the
state housing department built only 1,285 new
homes last year.

Much of the current public housing is also old and
run down, and there is a $750 million maintenance
backlog, which will take at least 20 years to
overcome.

Families who do manage to obtain public housing
are invariably trapped in areas with high
unemployment and minimal services. It is virtually
impossible to secure a transfer to a better area.

Those denied public housing often have no choice
but to turn to boarding houses and caravan parks,
where they are at constant risk of eviction. Roofs
Over Heads reports that several caravan parks on
the outskirts of Brisbane are closing down for
redevelopment, leaving families with nowhere to go.

More widely, low-income earners have little
protection against rising rents and many have been
forced to leave their homes because their rent was
increased. SAAP figures indicate that most of
those seeking help were in private rental
accommodation before becoming homeless.

The situation will undoubtedly worsen as thousands
of workers are made redundant by the current wave
of retrenchments sweeping through many industries.
In its report, Mission Australia provided a number
of case studies of ordinary working people and
immigrants who have become homeless. One was
Peter, 48, who had been working full time until 18
months ago in a factory that closed. He was paying
off his home but because of his inability to find
work, he started drinking. He lost his home, wife
and children.

These reports paint an alarming portrait of
growing poverty and destitution among families,
women, children, the elderly and single men.
Unemployment, the driving down of wage levels and
the slashing of public services have combined to
produce a homelessness crisis not seen since the
Great Depression of the 1930s.

In ruling circles, the homeless are treated with
contempt, increasingly regarded as pests who
should simply be removed from sight to protect
property values and business prospects. South
Sydney Mayor John Fowler recently called on
charities to halt food services and stop
distributing bedding material in council parks,
declaring that the homeless were upsetting local
residents and business owners and encouraging
vermin. ?Homelessness is a lot more visible and
vexatious,? he complained. Tolerance was ?wearing
thin?.

These are not isolated comments. In Sydney's west,
Parramatta Lord Mayor Lorraine Wearne and local
business owners have demanded the removal of a
charity soup kitchen and even park benches from
the city mall in order to rid the shopping
district of ?loiterers?.


.

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