AFFORDABLE HOUSING & HOMELESSNESS IN THE LUCKY COUNTRY

It was synchronicity. I had been listening to ABC Radio National on the expanding housing crisis faced by my age of 50 + women through lack of structural discriminations over a life-time to find a scarcity of affordable housing.
 clink here for ABC Radio's BACKGROUND BRIEFING LINK   
   

Later I found an email from my Federal M.P.s office announcing the new Parliamentary Secretary for Housing 

and Homelessness, Senator Doug Cameron was coming to town!

Queensland Times 21/8/2013

The Barry Jones Auditorium at the Ipswich Library(opposite the Bill Haydn Centre), had an audience of managers and field- workers from non-government and church run housing and homeless organisations. 

Their questions and petitions reflected a diabolical situation for their clients and workers, especially since the Campbell Newman State Government were sworn in and started pulling apart the glue in the fabric being created by a socially responsible ALP.

Federal money is now propping up people via Centerlink
and community organisations like Tenants Advisory Services because the Queensland Government really is degrading and CUTTING like sociopaths.

Also  attending was a woman who described herself as a Carer to her husband whose mental illness had escalated by the letters they received from the Department since Queensland's Minister for Housing, Tim Mander(of Scripture Union School Chaplain success), started sending requests for them to move out. 

She judged the intent was for the State to disown responsibility for public housing as her neigbouring house was vacated and not replaced with new tenants, but sold.

M.P. Shayne Neumann informed her they were selling houses but not the title so they still had the asset on the books, creating a situation where the purchasers could not gain investments and loans to fulfill their social housing mission, such as Churches of Christ and Salvation Army.

My appeal to N.S.W Senator Cameron in his new role was to consider the situation of vulnerable women my age and over who have no superannuation, brought up kids, had jobs in factories and now feel the ill effects of  osteo-arthritis.

It's on the record that divorce impoverishes women and does not augur well for a decent egalitarian ethic to accept it as their fate in a free market.

My comments resonated with others in the auditorium. Doug tried to suggest it wasn't only a women's issue, but the latest report say it is, after-all, I threatened in my histrionic eloquence, the consequence is a greater burden on society because we women live longer!

Blair ALP members privileged to meet comrade from NSW, Senator Doug Cameron.
Ipswich Metro Hotel for nibbles and responsible drinking.......

P.S. Some notes for ALP Housing campaign: - The Henry Tax Review said Negative Gearing doesn't work - transfer the wealth to invest in social housing infrastructure - compare that to Tony Abbott giving pretty rich maternity payments to professional women to design a baby.

Get some youngsters who want to leave school to get apprenticeships in the building trade - then they can build their own Grand Designs....

GET OUT OF LITTLE SQUARE BOXES - BUILD SOME CURVES WITH FIRE RESISTANT STRAW BALE HOUSING WHERE RENT IS 25 percent of income! 

               1986-1996. AUSTRALIA WAS THE WORKER'S

 & Unemployed Workers PARADISE...for full story press here:

Our life as Australian Puppeteers

House ownership was achievable. Working conditions, entitlements and decent wages are the envy of many people in many countries. With a strong Union/Labor Movement preventing WORKCHOICES under Prime Minister Howard we now prepare for the Tory parties to remove Penalty rates.

WHY DO I CARE?

My husband and I were able to own our house through a Victorian State Government in 1985. The repayments were 25 percent of our unemployment benefit plus CPI.

Getting on the property ladder, even though we had to move out of the city worked well. I didn't drive then, but we lived in the country town of Kyneton, and could push the kids to playgroup, or the G.P. Later they could walk to school and I learned to drive for my 30th birthday so I could have better work opportunities.

We made a profit for a decent deposit for our move to Queensland to try for jobs there...(see Poetry Platter on left)

Even with a $40,000 deposit the major Banks would not give us a home loan to settle in Queensland, when re-payments were less than  market rents! Why? because we were stigmartyred on the dole. 

Today they also turn down applicants because they can't get secure jobs. Life as a casual worker does not give you access to Real Estate. We went back to the State Government for a loan. You could then....

I believe in The Common-wealth re-investing in their people when the worse aspects of capitalism won't  and selfish Tory socially unjust, exclusionary ideologies echo notions of social Darwinism.           
I don't carry a chip on my shoulder, I fly with wings of avenging words, created by injustices.  WHY DO I CARE? 

A newspaper for me - see the side-dish on the left: Ingredients in the Mix for the full story.

I was homeless once upon a time when I had to move out at 16 years old because my parents were a bad alcohol fuelled influence. 
Anxiety about my circumstances as a 17yr girl in the suburbs of Melbourne without a secure, safe place and able to continue schooling, led me to enter the office of the State Member of Parliament, Race Matthews. 
He listened, he knew who to call, and within a day I had a room of my own with a couple who cared. A woman who liked me to read my poems, give me money for the bus so I could complete Year 12.

They received $5.00 a week to assist their expenses, under the Liberal Coalition's Treasurer, John Howard. He was the mean Scrooge. 

Perhaps he believed, like my Dad back in England who voted Conservative welfare spending would encourage a sense of entitlement for at risk teenagers? The uncertainty was "character building..."

What it was, dear reader was more kindling towards mental illness which would debilitate and prevent me from achieving my individual potential.

THE PERSONAL REALLY IS POLITICAL as you can read in my family pedigree living in the slums of Glasgow and Dublin. GENDER EQUALITY IS VITAL BUT SO IS POSITIVE DISCRIMINATION IN POLICIES ON PUBLIC HOUSING - YOU CAN'T TRUST CAPITALISM TO LOOK AFTER YOUR NEEDS AND INTERESTS.

http://julie-mcneill.blogspot.com.au/2011/01/dirty-old-towns-glasgow-and-dublin-1920.html            

   

History in family Her/story can remind you those who have the most of everything don't like to share it with those who have nothing, even for common human decency. 

                                      

  I bet if you reminded the LNP about the history of putting people who can't pay rent into the poor-house they'd take you literally. They'd think it would compliment their Boot Camps... Great Great Grandmother Brothwood had no choice to enter the Wolverhampton Work-House to have a bastard baby in 1867 in the middle of a Cholera epidemic. 

PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURE - NO BACKWARD STEPS OR HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF...

WHERE IS TONY ABBOTT'S COALITION HOUSING POLICY?
been looking and googling, can't find it...?