Street Life & Homelessness … The Opposite of Strata Living

Although we’re all focused on real estate and our stakeholders are more affluent (property owners, managers, services providers, etc) we should remember most real estate is about housing and there are some people that just don’t have any housing.

Homelessness is an issue in all parts of the world ... including New South Wales and Sydney.

Shelter NSW has published Factsheets on homelessness including the following disturbing information.

• On census night in 2001 there were 26,676 homeless people in NSW and on census night in 2006 that had increased to 27,374 people
• NSW has 26.1% of Australia’s homeless people
• That’s 42 homeless people per 10,000 people in NSW
• Each year approximately 19,800 homeless support periods (stays of 1 – 40 days) are provided by support agencies in NSW
• Every night of 2007 and 2008 62 adults and 32 accompanying children were turned away by homelessness services who could not house them
• There are 3,715 people in NSW sleeping on the streets every night – 1,182 in Sydney, 547 in regional centres and 1,986 in rural areas
• The most common reasons for homelessness are domestic or family violence (18.7%), relationship/family breakdown (12.6%) and drug/alcohol/substance abuse (11.7%)
• Indigenous people are over-represented amongst homeless – comprising 18.1% when they only comprise 2.2% of the NSW population
• In 2009 there were 1,511 crisis dwellings available for the homeless in NSW

Although most of us will never have to face that situation, it's hard to imagine what it would
be like to have nowhere to stay and nowhere to go ... such that you have to sleep in the
street.


There are many great organisations helping the homeless and we should make sure we help

them help the homeless.

Francesco …