Transforming homes and lives after the floods

Eleven young participants in Mission Australia’s Access Program – Plastering have taken our “transformation” philosophy to heart, making positive changes to their own lives while giving a Queensland household affected by the January floods a helping hand.

Access is a training program that provides long-term unemployed youth (among other job seekers) with the skills and motivation to gain apprenticeships.

The participants attended Bremer TAFE for four weeks, studying five units from the Solid Wall and Ceiling Plastering Qualification. They then had the chance to put their new knowledge to the test by spending a week working on a flood-affected house in the Ipswich suburb of Bundamba.

Mission Australia Australian Apprenticeships Access Program Placement Officer Leonie Doyle said this particular program was run to fill a local skills shortage in post-flood Queensland where many homes need to be gutted and relined.

Ms Doyle said she was bowled over by the enthusiasm shown by the young men – few of whom who had real work experience.

“When I first told them they were going to do a week of restoring a home, they were really excited and counted down the weeks and days until they started,” she said. “Once they were in the flood-affected community they were determined to do as much as they could.”

Working in small teams under the supervision of their trainers, over the course of a week the young men had fixed new lining boards to all walls and ceiling, and even relined the linen cupboard and pantry.

“The owners were most grateful – on the last day they told the boys they were moving their bed inside that night after spending months living in a caravan,” she said. “The sense of achievement and pride the boys felt was wonderful to see.”

Significantly, all the young men who began the course finished it – and four of the 11 participants have since started apprenticeships with group training company Apprenticeships Queensland and are now restoring homes in the Bundamba area.

Another three are expected to be signed up to apprenticeships this month. Congratulations to all 11 participants on a job well done.

Locking out the homeless to pay for roads, bridges

Oh for $20 million dollars to do some advertising to help the homeless.

It certainly worked for the mining industry.

You can guarantee there'll be no TV ads in outrage that the federal government has decided to strip nearly a third of the money from one of their own landmark homeless policies – the National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS) – in response to the Queensland floods.

We have a huge problem with homelessness and affordable housing in Australia, and we'll never meet the self-imposed targets for reducing it if we keep raiding the kitty.

More than 105,000 Australians are homeless. Melbourne and Sydney are now considered to be two of the most unaffordable cities for housing in the world and we have less affordable housing than any other developed country.

To their credit, the Rudd government and the former minister for housing Tanya Plibersek not only put the issue of homelessness back on the map, they cemented it at the centre of government policy.

They decided that a major part of the way forward was to 'turn off the tap' – to stop people becoming homeless in the first place.

The National Rental Affordability Scheme was a key element in turning off the tap.

The scheme boosts the supply of affordable rental housing by providing a financial incentive to community and private investors if they charge 20 per cent or more below market rental rate.

The fewer homes built as part of the scheme, the more individuals and families at risk of homelessness.

The community services sector was happy with the policy, and more importantly, it is working.

Take Mary for example, who came to Mission Australia after being evicted from her home when she was unable to meet the cost of her rising rent. She and her five children at times sought shelter under a bridge in Western Sydney.

We helped her into temporary housing, provided her with support to deal with a range of personal issues, and worked with her to find a permanent home – which as it turns out was partially funded through NRAS.

Or consider another client, Anna, who had been suffering the effects of a mental illness on-and-off for most of her adult life.

Anna had stayed for short periods in boarding houses, other times on the street and had been turned away by a string of other organisations before she came to us.

But as she explained, all she really needed was someone to help her maintain a stable tenancy.

Thankfully, through NRAS – along with some Mission Australia funding – Anna has done just that.

For the last 12 months she has been in the same safe and stable home. It's the longest she's been in one place for years.

However, then came Queensland's great deluge and the federal government's subsequent plans for rebuilding.

In addition to its flood levy the government announced a number of cuts to help fund recovery efforts – including to the National Rental Affordability Scheme.

The scheme has been earmarked for slashing by nearly a third – from 50,000 homes to 35,000 – to save $264 million over the forward estimates.

The floods across the country have caused immense human tragedy and the nation stood up to help those in need.

Clients at Mission Australia's Brisbane homeless service, Roma House, volunteered to sandbag properties and help with the clean up of inundated homes.

From the first to the last we fully support the need to rebuild and the need to make sacrifices and savings to pay for those efforts.

But is it fair to penalise the weakest in our society by cutting back a key plank in the nation's fight against homelessness?

What rationale could there possibly be to justify taking a roof away from the likes of Mary or Anna to rebuild roads?

An easy target perhaps, but frankly it's unacceptable.

Our most vulnerable don't have $20 million to run a campaign to get this decision overturned. More likely, they'll cop it and sit silently resigned to the fact under our bridges and in our parks.

The government needs to rethink this measure – and if not, the Parliament must correct their error – and put homeless policy back on track.

The men and women of Roma House were willing to pitch in and help their fellow flood-affected Queenslanders.

The question is will their countrymen and women – and our political representatives – help them in their time of need?

This opinion piece appeared in The National Times