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The Forum > Article Comments > It takes a woman’s touch: combating homelessness > Comments

It takes a woman’s touch: combating homelessness : Comments

By Anne Matthews-Frederick, published 1/3/2005

Anne Matthews-Frederick argues that a different approach is needed to provide affordable housing.

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“It takes a woman’s touch” ?.

I think this comment is a slap in the face for all those males who have donated their time and money towards helping the homeless. Perhaps they shouldn’t in the future?

“Accommodation is divided on a fifty-fifty basis between the homeless and single low-income “key” workers such as teachers, nurses, cleaners, artists and so on, so each housing complex is home to an interesting cross section of people. This is the first pillar of success: 50 per cent of residents are comfortable in mainstream society.”

It is good to see that this type of shared housing is occurring, and hopefully it will work.

In other places, the homeless have been simply rounded up and re-located put into housing units, but this often left them quite isolated, as they had minimal social contact in those housing units. In fact they often reported that they had more social contact living on the streets, than in the housing units they had been re-located into.

But what is more important in the longer term, is to adequately identify why there are homeless people (often male) who are on the streets to start with.
Posted by Timkins, Tuesday, 1 March 2005 11:54:24 AM
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Exactly right, Timkins.

No matter how informed and well-written her article might have been, by blatantly pushing gender-feminist ideology, the author destroys any possibility of fairminded-people seriously considering her work.

Anne Matthews-Frederick, you offend me enormously and gratituously. Which means that you have abundantly earned any disrespect that I may show towards you. And I am not the kind of person who would allow you to skulk behind the shield of 'political correctness' to inhibits the spoeech of so many.

Woman, you need to read http://www.oz-aware.com/unconscious1.htm and also http://www.oz-aware.com/socialsuicide.htm to realise that, while you might be trying to help the homeless, you are inflicting vastly more harm on society generally.

But I doubt you would understand. As indeed you would never understand how 'evil' you are to the wellbeing of women and children, let alone men.

There's a quite accurate psychological term for people who (quote) "harm in the name of helping." They are known as 'moral imbeciles'.
Posted by ozaware, Wednesday, 2 March 2005 12:29:33 AM
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Huh? Other than the article's title, I can't find anything in it that would provoke a misogynist rant like that from "ozaware" above. It looks to me like Ms Haggerty has developed an innovative solution to a blight on all our cities: the incidence of homeless people in the midst of conspicuous wealth.

As it is described, Ms Haggerty's Common Ground project provides a practical approach to an entrenched problem to which more conventional approaches have proved relatively ineffective. Mr "ozaware"'s approach is blather out his idiosyncratic ideas on morality to anyone who'll listen (and many who'd rather not). I know which approach I'd back if I was looking for ways to alleviate the problem of homelessness, rather than empty rhetoric.

Morgan
Posted by morganzola, Wednesday, 2 March 2005 8:21:13 AM
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The main reason for homelessness in this country is mental illness and drug & alcohol addiction. We cannot hope to deal with homelessness until we attack these two ailments seriously.

Anne, I don't imagine that your phone has rung off the hook with calls from teachers, nurses, cleaners and artists volunteering to shack up in a little box next door to alcoholics, drug addicts and nutters. (Well, not from teachers, nurses or cleaners at any rate.)
Posted by Cranky, Wednesday, 2 March 2005 1:57:10 PM
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Morgan,

True to form all you can do is throw the 'misogynist' epithet at me. Take a read of the book "Who Stole Feminism" and learn about that which you so lionheartedly defend.

Cranky,

well said. That's the problem with these bleeding hearts. They'll wreck fifty productive lives to save one that is hopeless.

In schools the metaphor is that they see one kid has a broken leg, so they break the legs of all the other kids to create equality.

Problem is, they have an iron grip on many of our social-management processes and systems---especially education. No wonder Aus going to hell in a hurry (those violent deaths in Brisbane streets and the riots in Macquarie Fields are not just 'happenstance'?

Perhaps when Grace and Morgan have lived in one of those 'wonderful' homeless housing projects they'll sing a different tune...
Posted by ozaware, Thursday, 3 March 2005 4:30:25 PM
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RE: ‘It takes a woman’s touch’ - Matthews-Frederick, 1 March 2005

The BHC have in fact drafted an initiative to combat homelessness experienced by people whose addictions and mental health issues exclude them from Brisbane’s emergency hostels.

The model specifically targets the ‘too hard’ cases and aims to support clients in reengaging with the community. More information about the proposed BHC Hostel is available from: http://www.brisbanehousingcompany.com.au/documents/BHCHostelBusinessCase.pdf

The model, largely inspired by the work of Rosanne Haggerty with the Common Ground Project, has not to date received much support as yet from funding bodies.

This article also makes reference to BHC’s rent policy and suggests BHC tenants could be paying a high percentage of their income to rent.

BHC makes every effort to ensure its tenants pay no more than 30% of their income in rent. 30% is the accepted benchmark for affordable housing and coincidently, the same percentage paid by Common Ground Project tenants
Posted by clearing up the facts, Wednesday, 31 August 2005 1:48:01 PM
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