Homelessness and Refugees

CONSEQUENCES OF COVID-19: Melbourne’s Homelessness

By Isabella Lessene, Year 11, The Ridgeway Campus

We’ve all seen the effects of COVID-19. We’ve seen it confine families within public housing towers or challenge health workers who continually struggle to accommodate and treat the rising cases in Victoria. Too often though, we forget what the effects of a global pandemic are on some of society’s most vulnerable: the homeless population. Homelessness in Melbourne is not a small nor recent issue, but the Coronavirus pandemic has shed new light on its severity and changed the way charity services continue their support.

The most recent Census showed 24, 817 people are without a stable housing situation in Victoria, including those living in severely overcrowded dwellings. In the light of a pandemic, the Victorian government has established facilities like the ‘Coronavirus Hotel’, dedicated to housing 2,000 people considered to be sleeping rough at a time. While this may prove a life-saving measure, services otherwise devoted to providing the very bare essentials, like food, have been forced to shut down. An example of which is Soul Kitchen, a sub-branch of the charity Outreach

Program 300 Blankets, who have been at the forefront of supporting the homeless population in Melbourne’s north. The essential and 100% volunteer-run Soul Kitchen is now required to suspend their work. Additionally, ever active organisations, including and similar to 300 Blankets, are faced with dramatic drops in volunteer numbers as a consequence of quarantine and isolation laws. This is unfortunate in so many ways, especially since my own experience with 300 Blankets has shown me the incredible work they do. Fellow students and I were led by volunteers who

introduced us to men and women living on the  streets of the CBD. We heard shocking and deeply saddening stories of the circumstances and hardships so many had faced, humanising the individuals we so often walk by without a second thought.

Even with the reduction in volunteer numbers and increased stress on the lives of the homeless, there is still hope. Many suggest that the efforts to provide social housing in the face of a pandemic might become a lasting solution to homelessness in Victoria. The Victorian Government has established a $2.7 billion commitment to social housing and homelessness, which will contribute to the development and renewal of 2,500 public housing dwellings. As indicated by The Age journalist Jewel Topsfield, the 'shock of COVID-19' has the potential to end street homelessness in Victoria permanently. This is a clearly worthwhile goal to look towards and, if

achieved, can prove not all the consequences of COVID-19 are quite so negative after all.

Home Sweet Home

By Charlotte Cattell, Year 11, Plenty Campus

Refugees in Australia are a constantly debated and discussed topic and is worth acknowledging and unpacking through these forums. ‘Refugee’ is the term used to describe people who are unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion. This means that a refugee finds residence in a country in which they were not born or do not hold citizenship.

These people leave their countries, not because they want to but because they need to for their own safety or the possibility of a better future, which cannot be offered by their country of origin. 

Statistics from 2018 show that 70.8 million people were forced to leave their country of residence, with 25.9 million of them being classified as refugees. The most common countries these people seek refuge from include Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and Myanmar. 

Australia is the 50th most popular country for refugee intake. Although this may come as a

surprise, the countries that intake the most refugees include those neighbouring, including Pakistan, Turkey or Uganda. Australia protects refugees under its Refugee and Humanitarian program whereby the Minister of Immigration decides how many people Australia can and will take every year. In 2019, this number sat at around 19,000 and is seen to be rising every year.

Refugees face extreme hardship during their lives, both in their country of origin and in their journey to find refuge. This means that it is important for Australians to be welcoming and open to having them in our communities. Not many countries offer the opportunity for resettlement and so it is very important that they can do so here, in Australia. Only a small number of UN States take part in the UNHCR’s resettlement program, where Australia has been one of the world’s top resettlement countries, along with the United States, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom and the Nordic countries. This program is an incredibly important part of what makes Australian such a diverse, accepting, and amazing country.

It is important to also acknowledge that refugees, although seemingly similar, aren’t asylum seekers as they have not yet been given the title of refugee.