… and they have no home

PORTRAITS of homeless Western Australians were hung in federal Parliament this week, a call to Canberra’s politicians to act on growing numbers of women experiencing homelessness.

The Eye Contact exhibition was organised by five WA Rotary Clubs in hopes of putting a face to the issue, focusing on the surge of women over 55 who are becoming homeless at a high rate due to disrupted careers, discriminatory superannuation rules and unaffordable rentals.

Graham Peden of the Rotary Club of Perth says the organisation does a lot of good fundraising work “often by cooking and selling sausages”, and Rotary WA runs a homeless hub to coordinate projects supporting domestic violence victims, providing food and clothing, and helping develop tiny homes for older women.

But homelessness is a big problem and they had to look beyond a sausage sizzle to reach those with the power to solve it.

“Sufficient funding to buy/create homes for the homeless can only be made available by a combination of both State and Federal Governments because we are talking about a lot of money to solve the homelessness problem,” Mr Peden told us via email.

“There are three basic ingredients required: Money, land and the will of our population wishing to do something about the homelessness problem and Australians should lobby their MPs to advise them that a solution to the homelessness problem is important.”

by DAVID BELL