AUSTRALIA’S generous response to the recent Vinnies CEO Sleepout has been praised but the fact that “such a prosperous country has more than 105,000 people homeless every night” has been called “a national disgrace”.
St Vincent de Paul Society’s national council chief executive officer Dr John Falzon made the comments, adding “we must all join our voices in calling for a housing guarantee for all Australians”.
Dr Falzon’s comments came after he, and more than 700 other CEOs around Australia, slept out in the nation’s often chilly capitals with little more than cardboard, sleeping bags and a mug of hot soup, eventually raising more than $2.7 million in funds for Australia’s homeless.
Brisbane Catholic Education executive director David Hutton was among 55 CEOs sleeping rough in Brisbane’s inaugural sleepout on June 17 at South Bank.
Mr Hutton said he received a “crash course in homelessness and its victims” on the night.
“The director of housing for St Vincent de Paul Wal Ogle gave a fairly lengthy talk about the facts around homelessness,” Mr Hutton said.
“I think it was news to some of us in the sense that the typical view of homelessness is of the dishevelled elderly alcoholic.
“In fact these people only represent five per cent of the homeless.”
Mr Hutton said CEOs were told most male homeless were people with mental illness and most females without homes were people suffering from domestic violence and abuse.
A speaker who had been homeless also spoke about how he had become homeless and what helped him get back off the streets.
Mr Hutton said a key message and challenge for CEOs was to see homelessness not as a charity issue but as a human rights issue.
Dr Falzon said his involvement in this year’s sleepout had been “a moving experience, especially in that we were able to hear the stories of people who had experienced the reality of homelessness”.
He said the awareness raised by the experience would hopefully lead to further action.
Mr Hutton said many of those involved in the Brisbane sleepout left with a lot to think about.
“How might some of these CEOs in their work particularly as developers and town planners and CEOs of big construction companies, how might they start to think about that issue of people needing affordable housing, emergency housing?”
Brisbane’s inaugural sleepout has already raised about $335,000.
This has added to an amount which may reach $3 million nationally, a society spokeswoman said.
