Perth Voice Interactive

A HOMELESS support group member has described Perth lord mayor Lisa Scaffidi’s views on beggars as “misguided”.

She’s been reported saying, “they live in a home and are using the collections from their begging to pay their way in life. It’s pretty shocking”.

She says pleas for money should be ignored as there are services to provide food and shelter to the genuinely homeless.

Meanwhile, Perth city councillor James Limnios was quoted in the Sunday Times last weeked saying “I have been led to believe by certain people that this is actually a bit of an organised scenario.”

“To insinuate this is part of a commercial operation shows a superficial understanding of poverty and homelessness in the city,”

Conrad Liveris from advocacy group Street Smugglers spent a week on Perth’s streets in January to better understand problems faced by the homeless.

He says claims of organised begging rings aren’t backed up by evidence, and the beggars he’d met were genuinely in need.

Even those with temporary accommodation can spend their entire pension on rent, meaning if they don’t make beg they have no funds for food.

“To insinuate this is part of a commercial operation shows a superficial understanding of poverty and homelessness in the city,” he says.

He says the closest thing he saw to “organised” begging was a group of nine closeknit homeless people who’d been on the streets together for a long time. When one had extra money, they’d buy food and supplies for the whole group, but he says there was nothing sinister about it.

“Homeless people do pool their resources together, that makes sense, because they act as a family.”

by DAVID BELL