'Group moves people into foreclosed houses'

The Charlotte Observer has an interesting article about a group of activists in Miami called Take Back the Land, who are helping homeless people move into foreclosed homes:

Max Rameau delivers his sales pitch like a pro. “All tile floor!” he says during a recent showing. “And the living room, wow! It has great blinds.”
But in nearly every other respect, he is unlike any real estate agent you've ever met. He is unshaven, drives a beat-up car and wears grungy cut-off sweat pants. He also breaks into the homes he shows. And his clients don't have a dime for a down payment.
Rameau is an activist who has been executing a bailout plan of his own around Miami's empty streets: He is helping homeless people illegally move into foreclosed homes.

Read the whole article here.
(Found through Boing Boing.)

'Squat students set to defy uni order'

The students who have been squatting in some of Melbourne Uni's terrace houses have been given till tomorrow to move out:

This week the university issued an ultimatum to squatters that they leave by tomorrow.
But the students, who formed the Student Housing Action Collective (SHAC), have refused to move out and will hold a rally at the houses tomorrow.
"We have nowhere else to go and this rally shows that we're not planning to go quietly," student Elizabeth Patterson said.
Inner Melbourne rental vacancy rates are only 1.1 per cent and median rents have gone up by 17 per cent.
The students have proposed converting the properties into a student-run housing co-operative under housing association Common Equity Housing.

Read the whole article from, The Age, here.

'Urgency & Sustenance'

We were looking at this article on Tuesday afternoon, as part of working out how we make decisions as a household about when we should let people (generally people who have been sleeping rough) come and stay with us. It's an article Dave Fagg (from the Seeds mob in Bendigo) wrote about the tension between urgency and sustenance in mission:

As an 18 year old, I helped to organise a national conference on poverty, for Year 12 students. The CEO of an organisation that served people on the street gave a firebrand address on the need for young adults who would burn themselves out in service to the poor. I thought it was a great message for the high-achieving audience for whom ‘service to the poor’ would be squeezed around careers. But the conference organisers gave a corrective speech the next day, explicitly rejecting the CEO’s message, and emphasising that doing the little things is what matters, doing what you are able to. Which for those listening meant serving the poor in the context of a career which would give them status and wealth. Although I said nothing, I realised that I disagreed with this corrective. The state of the world requires urgency, a desperate plunge into the pain of the world and of its people.

Read the full article here.

'Homeless crisis at top university'

THE Rudd Government is facing pressure to boost income support for tertiary students, as Victoria's most distinguished institution — Melbourne University — reveals that hundreds of its students are homeless due to rising living costs.

Read the whole article at The Age, here.

I'm in Sydney

Got up early yesterday morning to catch the bus to Avalon Airport with Sarah (from Seeds in Bendigo). When my hand luggage went through the scanner, they said they weren't sure what was in it, and they wanted me to open it up. So I opened it up, and asked me if there was perhaps a binder in there, and I said there wasn't, but I realised I had a steel ruler in my pencil case, so they had a look in there, and there was a craft knife in it, which I hadn't realised when I packed my pencil case. So they had to chuck that out. Oh well. It turned out that one of Sarah's friends from uni just happened to be on the same flight as us, which was a pretty big coincidence.
Bryan picked us up from Sydney Airport, and drove us to Surry Hills, to Lauren's place, where Sarah is staying this week, and we dropped Sarah off there. Took this picture near Lauren's place:

Then Bryan took me to his place in Glebe to drop off my things (I'm staying with him and Heather). We had lunch there, and then went out to the Hope Street centre in Woolloomooloo.

We met up with Dave (my housemate) and the other people who are visiting Hope Street for the week. It turned out my friend John (from uni in Ballarat)'s sister Kim is also visiting Hope Street this week.
In the evening Colin (the director of Hope Street) showed us around Woolloomooloo and Darlinghurst a bit, including Kings Cross.

Late in the evening we went to a food van in Woolloomooloo, to see what it's like eating there. It was really different to what i expected. In my first year at Urban Seed some of us spent a fair bit of time hanging out with people at the food van at Flinders Street Station, and generally there weren't heaps of people, and it seemed like everyone knew each other, and there was often a kind of boisterous atmosphere. At the food van we went to last night there were heaps of people, and there was a really long queue, and everyone was very quiet and serious, and not many people were talking or even making eye contact with each other.
I was really surprised to see that there were a lot of people sleeping out in Woolloomooloo, in fairly big groups, just out in the open. You don't really see that anywhere in Melbourne. Most of the others slept out with them last night, some of them under the railway bridge, some of them at a library, and some of them at 'Kiwi Park' (a lot of New Zealanders sleep there). I slept in Hope Street's Backshed Cafe, which was still outside, but it was enclosed. I was pretty exhausted from working all day at Urban Seed the previous day, and then doing my cleaning work, and then getting up early yesterday morning to fly to Sydney. I still didn't sleep much. Some of the neighbours were playing Pokémon very loudly, and there were trains going overhead regularly. At about 1 am someone outside was shouting very loudly, 'WAKE UP YOU F***ING HOMELESS PEOPLE! WAKE UP! WAKE UP!'
This morning we went to the free breakfast which Hope Street runs, in Tom Uren Place, just outside the centre, and then hung around for Street Church, under the jacaranda trees. This afternoon I'm just having a rest. Might visit Café Church in Glebe later.
Tomorrow we're going to be at the Darlinghurst centre.

Common Ground

This week and next week at Urban Seed we're doing some orientation stuff to start off the year. It's basically training and team building, and this year we're also trying to connect with some of our neighbours a bit, like Dave Wilson and Simon Holt.
This morning Dave Wilson from City of Melbourne came over and was talking to us a bit about how his faith informs his work as a councillor. It was particularly interesting hearing from him about Common Ground, a project he visited in New York City last year, in which inner city hotels and apartment block are being renovated and turned into affordable accommodation for chronically homeless people. There's also support services available for the people who live there, right in their own homes. A few people from Melbourne had been over there visiting at about the same time, and they're in the very early stages of starting a similar project in Melbourne.

'No way home'

When we show school groups and church groups around at Urban Seed, we often get asked about what causes homelessness. This article from Sunday's Age explores that question a bit.

Homelessness Myths and Memories

The Council to Homeless Persons have released a series of short animations called Homelessness Myths and Memories, which tell the stories of various people's experiences of homelessness:

One of the recurring themes that became apparent whilst researching Equal service is the need to break down the pre-conceived views that business owners, operators and the general public have about homeless people and about why they are experiencing homelessness. Many participants in the project to date have expressed the belief that if the wider community could understand how easy it is to be at risk of homelessness, they may be more willing to see themselves as part of the solution to solving homelessness issues.

You can have a look at the animations here.

TV-land

Today they've been filming an ad for the Lord Mayor's Charitable Fund in our laneway, because they give us money to help run Credo. It's a bit weird because there's all these extras dressed up as 'homeless' people.

Evicted for Easter

Was out at Marcus' place last night doing more work for 'Dead Man Rising', and tomorrow we'll be setting up at The Dancing Dog.

A guy we know from Credo got evicted for Easter - just when all the accomodation services places are about to be closed for four days, so he was there with us too, and we were trying to work out where he can stay over the long weekend.

Dark Days at the Rooftop Cinema

Tonight we went to the Rooftop Cinema at Curtin House, to see Dark Days, a documentary film about people who live underneath New York City. Mark had been given some free tickets to the film, because the guy who owns it came to visit Credo a little while ago. It was a little strange being on a roof other than our own, because it seemed like all the buildings were in the wrong place.
The film was interesting. It seemed that while most of the people shown in the film knew each other and hung out together, they were very independent, and mostly just looked after themselves. While the film was being made, the people were evicted from the subway where they were living, and given housing. Unfortunately you don't get to see how they might have been going a few years after their eviction, though.

Journey to the margins - part 3

Call to Follow
From the roof we go back down to earth, to street level, to the basement: Credo Cafe.

As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake—for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people.’ And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.
(Mark 1:16-20)

Jesus went out again beside the lake; the whole crowd gathered around him, and he taught them. As he was walking along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up and followed him.
And as he sat at dinner in Levi’s house, many tax-collectors and sinners were also sitting with Jesus and his disciples—for there were many who followed him. When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax-collectors, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does he eat with tax-collectors and sinners?’ When Jesus heard this, he said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’
(Mark 2:13-17)

Credo was started because one of the first people that lived here was a chef, and he used to invite people he met on the street upstairs for meals. The word spread that if you knew this guy you'd get invited over for great meals, and soon there wasn't enough room in the apartment for everyone who was turning up, so the basement was cleaned up, and became Credo Cafe.
Ned, a guy who's been around Credo for a long time, said to me a couple of months ago, 'The reason I love Credo is that the worst of enemies can sit down across the table from each other and eat together.' This is kind of similar to what is going on in the scripture. The tax collectors were quite powerful people, but very unpopular because they worked for the Romans, who were occupying Israel at the time, and the sinners were people who were outcast from society because they didn't meet the religious peoples' standard of holiness, and here they are eating together. In our society lawyers have a lot of power, but aren't very popular because of the kind of work they do. Often in Credo we have lawyers and corporates from the companies that fund Urban Seed, eating alongside people who are outcast in our society because they live on the street or are addicted to drugs. Credo is a place where the powerless and the powerful can begin to be reconciled over lunch.

'Homeless will not be moved without reason'

The Age printed this article yesterday. A lot of what the article says doesn't sound very much like what we've been hearing from police, or from people on the street, or what some of us have seen.
The article quotes an article Sue Hogan (our advocacy worker) wrote about how the Commonwealth Games are effecting people we know.

Melbourne, Commonwealth Games, homeless, homelessness, police, policing,

Street rights and the Commonwealth Games

The Homeless Person's Legal Clinic at PILCH has put out a special newsletter (Word document) about people's rights when dealing with police, security guards and ticket inspectors during the Melbourne Commonwealth Games.
(Before the Olympics in Atlanta, and later Sydney, there were big capaigns to 'clean up' by getting rid of the street people, and something similar appears to be going on here in Melbourne.)

Melbourne, Commonwealth Games, homeless, homelessness, police, arrest, law, rights