Why Nordic countries? Why look at the Nordic countries? One reason is their relative success in tackling homelessness. Finland is the world leader in this. There, the number of people experiencing homelessness has fallen from more than 16,000 people in the late 1980s to about 4,500 people in 2020. This represents a homelessness rate of less than one per 100,000 (Finland’s population is about 5.5 million) compared with nearly five per 100,000 in Australia.
Being an idiot for Tony Abbott is a lifestyle choice being homeless isn’t
There is no local plan for those that are homeless, although council is prepared to share links. That does very little for a man that is homeless in the early hours of the morning! To get anything done out here requires access to transport, access to the Internet. Heaven forfends my few ‘possessions’ were left unguarded at a railway station if I sought to take a train into the city; there are no lockers although there is a secure place for bikes at the Boronia Railway Station. The other man was desperately trying to get two dollars for a cuppa and is sleeping on the ground, in a car park that belongs to a shop; he had more serious problems than mine. Homelessness is not an issue, it’s a crisis! I repeated something I did a few months ago, something I experienced a few years ago. After all the reports, after all the academic insights and opinions there is a serious national crisis that is not even being talked about in a realistic way. Maybe that is the way things are done. Lots of talk, glossy magazines and self-promoting publications giving the appearance of change whilst changing nothing.
I haven’t met a person who lived or lives on the streets and has not said that it is the hardest, scariest, worst of living.
Australia’s homeless — third highest rate and street homeless deaths increasing
Four years ago, Thomas Salmi was drinking to forget. He was homeless and living on the streets of Finland’s capital city Helsinki.
He had a rough start in life. He wasn’t able to live at home because his father had problems with aggression. He ended up going to nine different children’s homes, before falling through the cracks of the system in his late teens. By 21 he was homeless. “I lost the sense of a normal life. I became depressed, aggressive, angry and I abused alcohol a lot.” He would drink up to half a gallon a day and then get into trouble. “I thought why would I care if I go to jail? I don’t have to be out there in snow and cold.”
Salmi is a beneficiary of Finland’s much-lauded “housing first” approach, which has been in place for more than a decade.
Then, the former firefighter was sleeping rough. A family breakdown and worsening mental health condition had catapulted him from his community and his only possessions were was some loose change in his pocket and the clothes on his back.
“People assume all homeless people are drug users. Or that we’ve all got our hands out for help. They’re wrong,” he says.
This week, for the first time, a group of Victorian police officers spent the morning walking with Russell through the streets of Fitzroy and Carlton to find out first-hand what life is like for someone who is homeless. It was followed by a session where police could ask any question of people who had experienced homelessness.
Actually, no. The evidence from Finland – as well as numerous other pilot schemes across the world – shows the opposite is true. When people are given homes, homelessness is radically reduced, engagement in support services goes up and recovery rates from addiction are comparable to a “treatment first” approach. Even more impressive is that there are overall savings for government, as people’s use of emergency health services and the criminal justice system is lessened.
45% of single women over 45 are earning the minimum wage or less and all of these are either already homeless or at risk of homelessness, as the minimum wage is no longer able to pay the lowest rentals. 330,000 women fall into this category.
Very few are mentally ill before they become homeless, and very few are sleeping on park benches. Very few are criminals. Very few are professional beggars. They are mostly perfectly ordinary white collar workers or pensioners.
Why aren’t more cities using it?
Source: The Shockingly Simple, Surprisingly Cost-Effective Way to End Homelessness | Mother Jones
Two of the ACT’s peak advocacy bodies use Canberra Day to raise awareness about high rates of homelessness and disadvantage in the territory.
Exclusive: Loghman Sawari, a former Manus detainee, says he ended up destitute in the city of Lae before being given work and a bed by a local church
Mobile data can be costly, and practically unusable whenever you actually need it. Tourists also need to access the internet if they get lost, and buying a phone card for a trip that would last a few days seems rather wasteful. Homeless people are avoided, …
Source: [Video] Homeless Turned Into Roving WiFi Hotspots, Get Fed, Sheltered And Paid AnonHQ
Australian governments are deliberately contributing to the deaths, suicide, homelessness, domestic violence and mental illness of Australian Defence Veterans — both young and old.
These sustained and bureaucratically controlled ‘Wattle on Green’ attacks are as treacherous to Diggers on home turf, as the infamous ‘Green on Blue’ attacks on Coalition forces in the Middle and Wider East.
Time and again, in rapid fire betrayal, pensioner veterans have been promised paltry pension increases and time and again in our name, they have been publicly humiliated and their begging bowls filled with soiled matter and rotting promissory notes.
Worthless IOUs for risking stepping on IEDs
We might as well bury alive our returned service personnel.
Wednesday morning’s gut-wrenching report by Ashley Hall on the ABC’s AM program is a shameful indictment on how Australia treats its returned soldiers with blatant contempt.
It makes a mockery of the political expediency and duplicitous hollow words of successive political leaders who deliver sonorous and patriotic eulogies on the likes of ANZAC Day, during Turkish dawns and over the flag-draped coffins of those killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, whilst basking in the stolen heroic glories of those who lay down their lives for this country in squalid wars mounted upon squalid lies.
Afghanistan War veteran Geoff Evans, now working with the Returned and Services League, RSL’s LifeCare told Hall that Australian diggers were suffering from epidemic rates of homelessness, with some of them sleeping with their families in cars
He said a lot of parallels could be drawn with Vietnam:
…There’s a lot of parallels we can draw here with the Vietnam generation because everyone in Australia knows what happened to Vietnam veterans.
If you look at mental health, suicide and alcoholism – including in their families – well we’re seeing that play out again in my generation.
We must not capitulate to the will of successive governments and ignore our older veterans in favour of younger veterans.
Both groups must be treated as the first among equals.
Just as there is no space for a generation gap amongst the dead, none must be allowed amongst the living.
I urge everyone to stand shoulder to shoulder on this.
Post-traumatic stress is an insidious and parasitic worm that can, if left unchecked, entirely consume the body, mind and soul of its host.
Because some of our diggers are older, does not mean that their illnesses and horrible predicaments are less real or less worthy than those of younger diggers.
It is clear that successive governments are holding off on compensating older diggers in the hope they will die off and thus avoid any payouts of illnesses contracted through exposure to Agent Orange and other poisonous toxins — as well as giving them fair and honourable increases in their pensions.
We should note that Agent Orange affected military personnel as well as civilians.
On next week’s second Tuesday in the month, long after the hooves of The Melbourne Cup are stilled, some permanently, millions around the nation will again hold their breath on Remembrance Day and observe a minute’s silence on the 11th day of the 11th month to acknowledge the 96th Anniversary of the Armistice of the First World War as well as the sacrifice made by the dead, the living and the living dead who walk amongst us, in all wars and conflicts.
For several years, Independent Australia has campaigned and written about the shameful plight of our veterans.
On Monday, the Defence Force Welfare Association (DFWA) in conjunction with the Alliance of Defence Service Organisations (ADSO) issued a media release condemning the outrageous and pompous decision of the Defence Remuneration Tribunal (DFRT) to endorse the Abbott Coalition Government’s crude and unforgivable decision to limit veteran pension increases to an insulting 1.5% per annum – wait for it – thinly spread over three years — barely half the expected annual inflation rate.
National President, David Jamison said:
“It is a strange way to reward ADF members for their dedication and hard work especially as the Government has just dispatched a new contingent to the ongoing Middle East conflicts.”
It is time that DFWA Patron, His Excellency General, the Honourable Sir Peter Cosgrove AK MC (Retd), now Governor General, did what he should have done when he was chief of the Army and when he was chief of the Defence Force — publicly recommend that Australia’s returning defence personnel be accorded pensions worthy of their sacrifice and commitment.
There is fresh blood on the yellow wattle, spilling onto the green of our national colours and national returned veterans.
From wounds and heartbreak caused by successive and callous home-grown Australian governments, whose continuing war against our veterans is such that they are taking no prisoners; dead or alive.
olddogthoughts 
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