Two things stand out about homelessness today. First, the level of homelessness in Australia is intolerable. It is a sad statement of our values as a wealthy society. Second, it is complex. There is no simple solution to it. For that reason, it needs determination, serious planning and a clear and demanding program to ensure that everyone seeking a place in which to live and raise a family can find secure accommodation, writes Fr Andrew Hamilton SJ on pray.com.au.

As a society we have allowed homelessness to grow because we have ceased to regard housing as a human need. Instead, we have allowed it to be treated as a financial investment. We have allowed biased regulation of taxation, investment and security of rental tenure, and the reduction of government investment in social housing to make it impossible for most families to buy houses, and for people without reliable income to rent accommodation. That we have allowed this to happen and do so little to change it states our priorities as a nation. We are more concerned with profit than with people. This attitude leads us logically to make homelessness a crime and to pass laws that conceal it by banning people from sleeping in parks and on city streets.

*Homeless Jesus, by sculptor Timothy Schmalz, outside Newman College, Melbourne. PHOTO: Australian Jesuits via Catholic Outlook..*

NO QUICK SOLUTIONS
There is, however, no simple and quick solution to the lack of housing. Simply to build more houses for new owners will increase their prices as wealthy investors buy them. To reduce rapidly the cost of houses, however, will bring economic turmoil and political suicide. There needs to be a staged combination of removing the incentives for investment in houses, much more public investment in social housing and protection of people who rent.

To support these changes, we need a different attitude to housing. We must see it as about persons not dollars. This change of vision from seeing housing as an investment to see it as a human right highlights how essential secure accommodation is. We imagine what we lose as persons if we have no place in which to live. To be homeless cuts connections. If you have no fixed address, you will miss mail, will find it hard to have things delivered, to have friends and family visit you, and to access government services. You will move often from place to place; your children will change schools, miss friends and experience only passing relationships. Even connections with the Internet will become more difficult and expensive. With no kitchen, food will be expensive, hospitality impossible; with no laundry or bathroom it will be hard to maintain hygiene and clean clothing. For such reasons many people who live precariously see secure housing as their major need. They know that insecurity contributes to mental illness and to withdrawal from society.

RIGHT TO SHELTER
In modern societies people have a right to shelter. Stable accommodation is necessary if we are to live fully as human beings with our dignity respected. Without it we shrink as persons, we lose touch with friends and family. We also lose the connections to society without which our lives become precarious.

Homelessness Week is an occasion for seeing ourselves as persons, linked by our humanity to people who are doing hard. It is a time to measure ourselves by our relationships and not by our properties. It is a time to demand that our governments take responsibility for shaping an economy that will discourage people from treating property as an investment and will allow people to buy or rent housing cheaply, a time to give priority to build social housing for those who need it.

This article by Fr Andrew Hamilton SJ was published on the Jesuit website pray.com.au.