If politicians saw the luck in being wealthy, they’d address homelessness

Opinion: October 10 is World Homeless Day. There will be various events recognising the day locally and globally. They will offer an opportunity for all of us to reflect on the problem of homelessness, of which there are many.
The day of course will not end the problems here or anywhere else in the world. The only reason for this is that we choose not to. Hopefully these events will challenge common views of people living on the street as objects simply of annoyance, nuisance or pity. Politicians will be invited to participate, but these events are not a photo opportunity for them but a challenge.
In a way, that is not surprising when our political leadership sees itself as “wealthy and sorted”. As it happens I am “wealthy and sorted” too. But being in that position carries with it obligations to match the privilege. You may have been a winner in the rat race, but you are still a rat. You may have survived or even thrived in dog-eat-dog world, but you are still a dog. You may be crowing like the cock of the roost, but you may still be tomorrow’s feather duster.
There is a lot of luck in getting to be “sorted”.
“Now some folks are born into a good life, and other folks get it anyway, anyhow,” as Bruce Springsteen put it. Some folks never get the good life, never get sorted. If you are without a safe place to live that will be the outcome of many things that did not go your way, breaks that went against you, choices – however limited – that turned out wrong. To stay with Springsteen: “Down here it’s just winners and losers and don’t get caught on the wrong side of that line.”
It’s very hard to get back from. I know people who have. It takes extraordinary fortitude, hard work, and – yes – luck to do that.
My brother Dave Letele did, and his story gave birth to a movement where he now preaches hard work, no excuses, and above all “it’s possible” as a mantra. It is possible, but the odds are not good and the obstacles are many. He gets calls all the time, and the first instinct is to find a home, food, job, whatever it takes so this person is not broken on a mattress in a tinny house like he was.
My sister Danielle LeGallais did, and now pays it back in her role as a criminal defence barrister and in a wide range of services and activism to those still homeless. She has broken the shackles. It is possible but it is very hard. So hard that most do not make it. So hard because our social systems do not do enough to support shackle-breaking – and often create new obstacles.
My brother Aaron Hendry is a tireless advocate for homeless and otherwise vulnerable young people. He writes, speaks and broadcasts about the problems and the solutions. Like Dave and Danielle he is neither a bystander nor an outsider. He knows because he is there day in and day out. With as well as for. It will be him or one of his comrades at 4.30pm on a Friday pressing on an official that they do have a place, they can do it, they should do it, because they do have a place and the young person with him does not.
None of the people experiencing being homeless and the events leading up to that situation are “sorted”. They need help but mostly they need empowerment. Such solutions must run right from the ground level (where homeless people must sleep) to the highest level of politics (the recently refurbished and now occupied Premier House).
It was striking that in the week before World Homeless Day much of the political discussion was on housing. Not for people without homes but for politicians selling homes and making gains on those sales which escaped taxation. Not many of those without a safe place to live or those at any imminent risk of being in that situation probably felt involved in that debate. That is a debate among those already “sorted”. It seems that even politicians who may dare to consider taxing such gains universally want to exclude the main property where most of such gains have been made. You will most likely not hurt the interests of those who are “sorted” if you are one of them.
Even the wider, some might say positive, debates about housing considered the interests of the “sorted”. I’m leaving aside the earlier though ongoing but unnecessary social support to owners of multiple houses through tax breaks. But a new initiative underwrites the risks of building new residences of whatever kind, because even the sorted know we need more houses if only to invest in. This market apparently needs government intervention (unlike so many others) not to house the most vulnerable but to assist those who seek to profit from building. No doubt that will help to get some people sorted or to entrench those already in that happy state. But it is all a very long series of steps away from doing anything whatsoever for those sleeping rough.
The best thing we, the sorted, could do is make World Homeless Day for, not simply about, those who are homeless. And sacrifice some of our wealth to do it.