As part of a series of blogposts on homelessness, I spoke with Digby Hughes of Homelessness NSW, the peak body for the sector in the state. This interview is the result of that conversation.
MdS: So, [the voice recorder is] recording. So, I was looking into homelessness a little bit and I found the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) pages about homelessness. They go back to about 2001 …
That’s right, yes.
MdS: … to make meaningful comparisons. The 2016 census figures are coming out later this year, but there seems to have been a change in policy around 2008 at the ABS with the Road Home report. How important was that report, do you think?
That was a very important [indecipherable] it actually put homelessness on the national agenda for the first time. Homelessness NSW believes very strongly that governments need to have plans to end homelessness. And in those plans you need to have targets. And we actually have a plan and targets [indecipherable] in this, but that’s another matter. But at least if you have a target then you can hold government accountable to meet that target. So that’s why we think that was important.
It actually had some new money attached to it that enables services to try some innovative, different practice. And we think that’s also a good thing as well because services are funded to provide a service, but to try something different, you know, takes more resources. And we don’t know what we don’t know, I suppose I’d put it. So, if I want to try something different I just can’t go and do that with my existing resources which the government funds me to do in a particular way. So, having some extra funding involved was good.
The other good thing about it was you actually had some housing involved. We actually got over 6000 new social housing dwellings in NSW, and that was the largest increase we’ve had in, you know, public housing, social housing in NSW for many, many years.
MdS: That was as a result of the Road Home report, was it?
That was part of the nation building, so it was at the same time. We also then unfortunately had the global economic crisis, and part of that was the nation-building program of the federal government at the time, and that included additional money then for public housing across the country.
MdS: One thing that Kate [Colvin of the Council to Homeless Persons] mentioned to me was the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness, which seems to be an annual or bi-annual agreement between the federal government and the states on funding of services for homelessness. Is that a correct understanding?
It was. It’s now been rebranded under the new government. So, it was the NAHA [(National Affordable Housing Agreement)], now what’s it called – good question – it’s the NAHHA. So, it’s the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement. So, a rebadging. And that’s an approach that’s currently being discussed between the federal and the state governments.
MdS: Is there any extra money in recent times coming from the federal government?
We don’t believe so.
MdS: The figure for [the] 2011 census is about 105,000 people homeless in Australia. How accurate do you think that is, and do you expect that figure to go up in the 2016 census count?
Look, good question. NSW is probably most of that. So, the NSW figure is about 28,000. Is it accurate? Well, it’s as accurate as it can be. The good thing is that the Bureau of Statistics uses the same methodology to find people who are homeless. If they use the same methodology they’ll get the same answer every time, rightly or wrongly. At least it’ll [reflect] growth and decline.
Is it as accurate as it can be? Probably not. I’ll go through some of the groups of people who are homeless. Rough sleepers are very difficult as a group of people to find, often. You know, because they’re not … The full name of the census is ‘The census on population and housing’ so [indecipherable] aren’t houses. They’re not in the census anyway. So, you’ve got rough sleepers who are hard to count, including people who are in the bush. We know that there’s a large number of largely males who sleep in the bush in various caves and whatever mostly around Sydney, all around NSW. So, I don’t believe they’re counted in the census. We know that older women – or women in general but – older women in particular who are rough sleeping don’t sleep at night, they move around during the night and they sleep during the day in more public spaces, for reasons of safety. So, they’re hard to count.
The other group I think would be very hard to count is couch-surfing, because [indecipherable] younger people, you know, “Do I know” – if I’m filling in the census form online – “is that male adult in the house, do I know that’s my daughter’s friend who is staying at our house for a few days, do I know whether he’s couch-surfing, [or is he] not at home because it’s unsafe, or is he just staying with a girlfriend for a few days?” And the other group is people in severely overcrowded dwellings, which in NSW is the fastest-growing group of homelessness. And again, I’m not sure how accurate that figure is.
I think they’re all under-counts, I’ll put it that way. So, the figure was 28,000. In those three groupings in particular I think we’ve got an under-count. And it’s no-one’s fault, it’s not to blame anybody, but I think they’re difficult areas to count. So, I think for rough sleepers, for couch-surfing and for overcrowded dwellings, I think there’s probably an under-count. But if the methodology stays the same then I think at least you’ll get the same reflection of the data flow, if that makes sense.
Do we expect the number to go up? Well, yes. And for a couple of reasons. One, we’ve got over 110 members across the state - Homelessness NSW - our members have been telling us consistently the numbers are increasing. The number of clients that they are seeing has been increasing, and continues to increase. And that they are new and different people, they’re not people who’ve been in the service system [before]. And it’s largely driven by the lack of affordable housing. On anecdotal evidence from our members – and in 2011 they were telling us that the numbers were going to go up from 2006, and they were right then, you know - we’ve got no reason to doubt them.
The other thing we know is that the City of Sydney does a street count. So, it’s only in Sydney and only the rough sleepers, but it’s accurate data. And they do that twice a year in August and in February, and the August data is collected a few days either side of the census. And between August 2011 and August 2016 the number of people sleeping rough in the City of Sydney went up 28 percent. On the only hard data we have, plus the anecdotal data, we suspect the numbers will be higher.
MdS: The ABS uses five different categories to count homelessness, and these are are: sleeping rough, in emergency accommodation, living in accommodation for the homeless, living in non-conventional dwellings due to lack of housing, and living temporarily with family or friends due to lack of housing. A lot of countries don’t have such a complete compass for their counting. How justified do you think the ABS is to have such a broad set of categories for counting the homeless?
I think they’re very justified in doing that, because we know that homelessness is not just rooflessness. It’s not just a matter of not having a roof over your head. It’s a matter that you don’t have a permanent place to call home. So, if you’re a victim of domestic violence, if you’re a woman escaping domestic violence and you are staying at a friend’s house for safety – to save your life – then you don’t have your own home. So, you might have a roof over your head that night, you might be able to have a shower, but you’re not in your home. You’re not in a home. The same as people in overcrowded dwellings, that’s when there are four or more bedrooms short of a standard. With these you are looking at 14 or 15 people in a two-bedroom apartment, that sort of thing. Again, it’s not a home as we see it under the Australian standard.
MdS: I wanted to talk about these schemes that developers have for increasing the yield on developments that they plan, in cooperation with the state government. So, if the state government gets some low-cost housing they will increase the number of apartments that they allow developers to …
Inclusionary zoning.
MdS: Inclusionary zoning, is that what’s it’s called?
Yes. Look, we’re generally very supportive of inclusionary zoning. We see inclusionary zoning around the world being operated, in London in particular, Vancouver, other cities around the world have inclusionary zoning and it’s a very good way of supplying affordable housing. And it’s got to be done in cooperation with the development sector. So, you build from day one. No-one likes surprises in life, big surprises. So, looking at a block of land and that block of land’s going to be redeveloped, and if you say, “Well, 30 percent of that has to be affordable housing.” And a lot of that then depends on the location and the services available. So, the closer to transport, the closer to education, the closer to jobs, the higher the level of affordable housing. Which makes sense.
MdS: Are you saying that the council will give them a bigger yield because of those things?
Yes. Well, we think they should. They can’t right now. We don’t have any inclusionary zoning in NSW.
MdS: Oh, we don’t? I thought the state government was doing that.
Oh, they’re talking about it.
MdS: Oh, they’re talking about it, they haven’t done it yet?
No. (See note at end of this blogpost.)
MdS: There’s another scheme that I’ve heard of in the Hills Shire. Have you heard of this scheme where the mayor and the council are working with developers and the state government to do something similar and what happens is the developers get extra yield if they give up apartments for a period of 10 years rent-free for what’s called transitional housing.
Transitional housing, that’s right. We’re doing that in cooperation with the Women’s Committee shelters and Bridge [Housing], a community housing provider out there. That’s, again, a good scheme. Anything that produces an additional supply of affordable housing is a good thing. If you’re from Sydney you know as well as I do, you know, the cost of housing in Sydney is through the roof. It’s the number one reason why people are becoming homeless. They just can’t afford to find a place to live.
MdS: Yes, housing is very expensive.
Among our concerns – and we have a number – is the lack of planning for when – and we do know it’s when – interest rates increase. We have a lot of people who have got a lot of household debt on properties that they can service right now. They can service the mortgage. If interest rates go up 2, 3, 4, 5 percent we’ve got a different crisis, a new crisis, out there.
The lack of affordable housing is in Sydney but it’s also regional. I mean, if you go to the far north coast - you know, Byron Bay, Tweed Heads area, Ballina, down to Coffs Harbour, that entire strip up there, from there north - the cost of housing up there is not that dissimilar to Sydney. It’s a state-wide issue.
MdS: Are there any other things that we haven’t covered that you think I should know about?
Well, I think the thing what we need to do in Sydney, in NSW, is to look at internationally what works to end homelessness. And various cities in various countries, they’ve actually adopted policies that have worked. I mean, Finland. It’s always good to look at different countries. And Finland, a number of years ago, adopted what’s called Housing First. That’s a scheme where people who are homeless are given a house and unconditional support to keep them housed. So, if it’s a mental health issue, if it’s an alcohol or other drug, if it’s whatever the issue is, you wrap the support around them. And Finland has basically ended chronic rough sleeping.
Utah has done the same, in America. Various cities in America. Vancouver’s doing this. Other cities are doing this and it is working. We believe that if you want to actually end homelessness – which we want to do, not just manage people who are homeless, but stop homelessness - you actually look at international evidence, see what works, and replicate it.
MdS: I guess one of the problems though with comparing different countries, is that different countries have got different ways of counting the homeless. So, Finland counts, for example, people who are living in prisons as homeless. So does Sweden, but we don’t in Australia.
Well we might as well because they end up being back homeless. It’s almost a revolving door of homelessness. Out of prisons, onto the street, back into prisons. But if you actually look at a Housing First approach you can say … We know that people in prison have literacy and numeracy issues, there’s mental health issues, there’s acquired brain injury, there’s a whole range of issues. So, start addressing those issues while people are in prison and continue to work with them, and as they leave prison effectively house them, not put them back out onto the street, not put them into the homeless service system, but put them in a house and give them support. It is that simple. Frighteningly that simple.
MdS: It’s just a matter of getting the Murdoch press and the politicians to agree to open the treasury a little bit wider and get more money into the system, I guess.
But it saves money in the long term, which is one of those odd things in life. You spend money today to save money in the future. And also, you could spend money differently. We recently had an academic here in Sydney and he gave a very good paper, which I can send you a copy of.
MdS: What’s his name?
Eoin O’Sullivan. And he compared Finland, Ireland and it might have been Sweden – I can’t remember now – all basically similar-sized countries spending the same amount of money on homelessness, but Finland is getting much better results because they’re actually spending it on a Housing First approach, they’re not just putting people in temporary accommodation or transitional accommodation, or anything else. They’re actually putting them into permanent, supported housing. It’s not just a matter of saying, “I want to spend money.” We understand that, this is an organisation. But you also have to spend money the best way.
MdS: Do it properly.
That’s right. As I was told as a child, “Do it once and do it right.”
MdS: That’s right.
I remember my mother and father both telling me that.
MdS: My father used to say the same thing.
Intuitively we know that. And you can actually stop spending money on prisons if you have less people going into the prison system out of being homeless. You actually save money. It’s cheaper to house people in a house than in a prison.
MdS: Just like it’s cheaper to have people go to the GP rather than the hospital.
That’s right. And prevention. Homelessness prevention. That’s the other part of it. We all know that. If I go and get regular check-ups at the dentist, it’s a lot cheaper than waiting til I need [a] triple root-canal operation. And less painful.
MdS: So, [the voice recorder is] recording. So, I was looking into homelessness a little bit and I found the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) pages about homelessness. They go back to about 2001 …
That’s right, yes.
MdS: … to make meaningful comparisons. The 2016 census figures are coming out later this year, but there seems to have been a change in policy around 2008 at the ABS with the Road Home report. How important was that report, do you think?
That was a very important [indecipherable] it actually put homelessness on the national agenda for the first time. Homelessness NSW believes very strongly that governments need to have plans to end homelessness. And in those plans you need to have targets. And we actually have a plan and targets [indecipherable] in this, but that’s another matter. But at least if you have a target then you can hold government accountable to meet that target. So that’s why we think that was important.
It actually had some new money attached to it that enables services to try some innovative, different practice. And we think that’s also a good thing as well because services are funded to provide a service, but to try something different, you know, takes more resources. And we don’t know what we don’t know, I suppose I’d put it. So, if I want to try something different I just can’t go and do that with my existing resources which the government funds me to do in a particular way. So, having some extra funding involved was good.
The other good thing about it was you actually had some housing involved. We actually got over 6000 new social housing dwellings in NSW, and that was the largest increase we’ve had in, you know, public housing, social housing in NSW for many, many years.
MdS: That was as a result of the Road Home report, was it?
That was part of the nation building, so it was at the same time. We also then unfortunately had the global economic crisis, and part of that was the nation-building program of the federal government at the time, and that included additional money then for public housing across the country.
MdS: One thing that Kate [Colvin of the Council to Homeless Persons] mentioned to me was the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness, which seems to be an annual or bi-annual agreement between the federal government and the states on funding of services for homelessness. Is that a correct understanding?
It was. It’s now been rebranded under the new government. So, it was the NAHA [(National Affordable Housing Agreement)], now what’s it called – good question – it’s the NAHHA. So, it’s the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement. So, a rebadging. And that’s an approach that’s currently being discussed between the federal and the state governments.
MdS: Is there any extra money in recent times coming from the federal government?
We don’t believe so.
MdS: The figure for [the] 2011 census is about 105,000 people homeless in Australia. How accurate do you think that is, and do you expect that figure to go up in the 2016 census count?
Look, good question. NSW is probably most of that. So, the NSW figure is about 28,000. Is it accurate? Well, it’s as accurate as it can be. The good thing is that the Bureau of Statistics uses the same methodology to find people who are homeless. If they use the same methodology they’ll get the same answer every time, rightly or wrongly. At least it’ll [reflect] growth and decline.
Is it as accurate as it can be? Probably not. I’ll go through some of the groups of people who are homeless. Rough sleepers are very difficult as a group of people to find, often. You know, because they’re not … The full name of the census is ‘The census on population and housing’ so [indecipherable] aren’t houses. They’re not in the census anyway. So, you’ve got rough sleepers who are hard to count, including people who are in the bush. We know that there’s a large number of largely males who sleep in the bush in various caves and whatever mostly around Sydney, all around NSW. So, I don’t believe they’re counted in the census. We know that older women – or women in general but – older women in particular who are rough sleeping don’t sleep at night, they move around during the night and they sleep during the day in more public spaces, for reasons of safety. So, they’re hard to count.
The other group I think would be very hard to count is couch-surfing, because [indecipherable] younger people, you know, “Do I know” – if I’m filling in the census form online – “is that male adult in the house, do I know that’s my daughter’s friend who is staying at our house for a few days, do I know whether he’s couch-surfing, [or is he] not at home because it’s unsafe, or is he just staying with a girlfriend for a few days?” And the other group is people in severely overcrowded dwellings, which in NSW is the fastest-growing group of homelessness. And again, I’m not sure how accurate that figure is.
I think they’re all under-counts, I’ll put it that way. So, the figure was 28,000. In those three groupings in particular I think we’ve got an under-count. And it’s no-one’s fault, it’s not to blame anybody, but I think they’re difficult areas to count. So, I think for rough sleepers, for couch-surfing and for overcrowded dwellings, I think there’s probably an under-count. But if the methodology stays the same then I think at least you’ll get the same reflection of the data flow, if that makes sense.
Do we expect the number to go up? Well, yes. And for a couple of reasons. One, we’ve got over 110 members across the state - Homelessness NSW - our members have been telling us consistently the numbers are increasing. The number of clients that they are seeing has been increasing, and continues to increase. And that they are new and different people, they’re not people who’ve been in the service system [before]. And it’s largely driven by the lack of affordable housing. On anecdotal evidence from our members – and in 2011 they were telling us that the numbers were going to go up from 2006, and they were right then, you know - we’ve got no reason to doubt them.
The other thing we know is that the City of Sydney does a street count. So, it’s only in Sydney and only the rough sleepers, but it’s accurate data. And they do that twice a year in August and in February, and the August data is collected a few days either side of the census. And between August 2011 and August 2016 the number of people sleeping rough in the City of Sydney went up 28 percent. On the only hard data we have, plus the anecdotal data, we suspect the numbers will be higher.
MdS: The ABS uses five different categories to count homelessness, and these are are: sleeping rough, in emergency accommodation, living in accommodation for the homeless, living in non-conventional dwellings due to lack of housing, and living temporarily with family or friends due to lack of housing. A lot of countries don’t have such a complete compass for their counting. How justified do you think the ABS is to have such a broad set of categories for counting the homeless?
I think they’re very justified in doing that, because we know that homelessness is not just rooflessness. It’s not just a matter of not having a roof over your head. It’s a matter that you don’t have a permanent place to call home. So, if you’re a victim of domestic violence, if you’re a woman escaping domestic violence and you are staying at a friend’s house for safety – to save your life – then you don’t have your own home. So, you might have a roof over your head that night, you might be able to have a shower, but you’re not in your home. You’re not in a home. The same as people in overcrowded dwellings, that’s when there are four or more bedrooms short of a standard. With these you are looking at 14 or 15 people in a two-bedroom apartment, that sort of thing. Again, it’s not a home as we see it under the Australian standard.
MdS: I wanted to talk about these schemes that developers have for increasing the yield on developments that they plan, in cooperation with the state government. So, if the state government gets some low-cost housing they will increase the number of apartments that they allow developers to …
Inclusionary zoning.
MdS: Inclusionary zoning, is that what’s it’s called?
Yes. Look, we’re generally very supportive of inclusionary zoning. We see inclusionary zoning around the world being operated, in London in particular, Vancouver, other cities around the world have inclusionary zoning and it’s a very good way of supplying affordable housing. And it’s got to be done in cooperation with the development sector. So, you build from day one. No-one likes surprises in life, big surprises. So, looking at a block of land and that block of land’s going to be redeveloped, and if you say, “Well, 30 percent of that has to be affordable housing.” And a lot of that then depends on the location and the services available. So, the closer to transport, the closer to education, the closer to jobs, the higher the level of affordable housing. Which makes sense.
MdS: Are you saying that the council will give them a bigger yield because of those things?
Yes. Well, we think they should. They can’t right now. We don’t have any inclusionary zoning in NSW.
MdS: Oh, we don’t? I thought the state government was doing that.
Oh, they’re talking about it.
MdS: Oh, they’re talking about it, they haven’t done it yet?
No. (See note at end of this blogpost.)
MdS: There’s another scheme that I’ve heard of in the Hills Shire. Have you heard of this scheme where the mayor and the council are working with developers and the state government to do something similar and what happens is the developers get extra yield if they give up apartments for a period of 10 years rent-free for what’s called transitional housing.
Transitional housing, that’s right. We’re doing that in cooperation with the Women’s Committee shelters and Bridge [Housing], a community housing provider out there. That’s, again, a good scheme. Anything that produces an additional supply of affordable housing is a good thing. If you’re from Sydney you know as well as I do, you know, the cost of housing in Sydney is through the roof. It’s the number one reason why people are becoming homeless. They just can’t afford to find a place to live.
MdS: Yes, housing is very expensive.
Among our concerns – and we have a number – is the lack of planning for when – and we do know it’s when – interest rates increase. We have a lot of people who have got a lot of household debt on properties that they can service right now. They can service the mortgage. If interest rates go up 2, 3, 4, 5 percent we’ve got a different crisis, a new crisis, out there.
The lack of affordable housing is in Sydney but it’s also regional. I mean, if you go to the far north coast - you know, Byron Bay, Tweed Heads area, Ballina, down to Coffs Harbour, that entire strip up there, from there north - the cost of housing up there is not that dissimilar to Sydney. It’s a state-wide issue.
MdS: Are there any other things that we haven’t covered that you think I should know about?
Well, I think the thing what we need to do in Sydney, in NSW, is to look at internationally what works to end homelessness. And various cities in various countries, they’ve actually adopted policies that have worked. I mean, Finland. It’s always good to look at different countries. And Finland, a number of years ago, adopted what’s called Housing First. That’s a scheme where people who are homeless are given a house and unconditional support to keep them housed. So, if it’s a mental health issue, if it’s an alcohol or other drug, if it’s whatever the issue is, you wrap the support around them. And Finland has basically ended chronic rough sleeping.
Utah has done the same, in America. Various cities in America. Vancouver’s doing this. Other cities are doing this and it is working. We believe that if you want to actually end homelessness – which we want to do, not just manage people who are homeless, but stop homelessness - you actually look at international evidence, see what works, and replicate it.
MdS: I guess one of the problems though with comparing different countries, is that different countries have got different ways of counting the homeless. So, Finland counts, for example, people who are living in prisons as homeless. So does Sweden, but we don’t in Australia.
Well we might as well because they end up being back homeless. It’s almost a revolving door of homelessness. Out of prisons, onto the street, back into prisons. But if you actually look at a Housing First approach you can say … We know that people in prison have literacy and numeracy issues, there’s mental health issues, there’s acquired brain injury, there’s a whole range of issues. So, start addressing those issues while people are in prison and continue to work with them, and as they leave prison effectively house them, not put them back out onto the street, not put them into the homeless service system, but put them in a house and give them support. It is that simple. Frighteningly that simple.
MdS: It’s just a matter of getting the Murdoch press and the politicians to agree to open the treasury a little bit wider and get more money into the system, I guess.
But it saves money in the long term, which is one of those odd things in life. You spend money today to save money in the future. And also, you could spend money differently. We recently had an academic here in Sydney and he gave a very good paper, which I can send you a copy of.
MdS: What’s his name?
Eoin O’Sullivan. And he compared Finland, Ireland and it might have been Sweden – I can’t remember now – all basically similar-sized countries spending the same amount of money on homelessness, but Finland is getting much better results because they’re actually spending it on a Housing First approach, they’re not just putting people in temporary accommodation or transitional accommodation, or anything else. They’re actually putting them into permanent, supported housing. It’s not just a matter of saying, “I want to spend money.” We understand that, this is an organisation. But you also have to spend money the best way.
MdS: Do it properly.
That’s right. As I was told as a child, “Do it once and do it right.”
MdS: That’s right.
I remember my mother and father both telling me that.
MdS: My father used to say the same thing.
Intuitively we know that. And you can actually stop spending money on prisons if you have less people going into the prison system out of being homeless. You actually save money. It’s cheaper to house people in a house than in a prison.
MdS: Just like it’s cheaper to have people go to the GP rather than the hospital.
That’s right. And prevention. Homelessness prevention. That’s the other part of it. We all know that. If I go and get regular check-ups at the dentist, it’s a lot cheaper than waiting til I need [a] triple root-canal operation. And less painful.
----------------------------------------------------
Note
After speaking with Digby Hughes, I asked the NSW Department of Planning and Environment about inclusionary zoning, and whether they had it as part of their portfolio of programs to deal with homelessness. They replied:
Inclusionary zoning exists via the state environmental planning policy for affordable housing revised schemes, known as SEPP 70 [(State Environmental Planning Policy 70)]. The City Of Sydney Council has affordable housing schemes operating under SEPP70 in Ultimo/Pyrmont, Green Square and Southern Employment Lands.
Together the schemes have resulted in 739 affordable rental homes for very low to moderate income households. A further 314 homes are in the development pipeline and expected to be built by 2019. Homes from the contributions raised by City of Sydney are built and managed by City West Housing.
To help increase the supply of affordable housing we are currently reviewing a number of Housing SEPPs including the Affordable Rental Housing SEPP and SEPP70. During the course of the review we are examining ways to help increase housing diversity and affordable housing across the state.
In relation to the National Rental Affordability Scheme, that Commonwealth initiative has now ended.The Sydney Morning Herald had published a story about inclusionary zoning in the city and how the rents that were being offered for the apartments under the scheme were actually found to be above the levels the scheme prescribed. In relation to this story, the department told me:
In relation to the article on affordable housing rents on 9 October 2017, the Affordable Housing SEPP allows new homes built under the SEPP to set rents in two ways – either through an income based rent or a discount to market rent. The Department is considering the issues raised in the Herald article in the review of the SEPP.
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