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The Microphone - STORIES OF HOMELESSNESS - Speak your mind. Tell your story. - Page 2

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Kylie - Realities Of Life On The Street

Kylie - Realities Of Life On The Street

Homelessness is often viewed as a slump. Usually it is assumed that the person has become homeless due to a drug or alcohol problem.

That was not my experience.

I didn't choose to be homeless. I found myself in a situation I couldn't escape from and I hit the road in an attempt to make the most of a bad situation — and it was the best thing I ever did.

The first night I cried myself to sleep. Every noise sent a shiver through me, the wind howled and drops of water kept landing on my face. I was wet, cold and miserable. Life couldn't get worse.

After a month I was living like a queen. I had a tent and an old stained mattress I found on the side of the road, I had a pocket full of food vouchers and some random had given me a glazed doughnut and five bucks.

Six months into my time on the streets, I was starving hungry and called home to ask for money, as my pension had been cut off due to me having "no fixed address". Everyone was too busy to talk to me and told me I needed to sort my life out and this was a lesson I needed to learn by myself.

I stole a man's wallet that day. I stared at the photo of the three young smiling children inside, as I scooped out the $70. This was what I had become. Nothing more than a desperate criminal.

Things had to change.

The streets were ruthless, so I went bush. I set up a tent 10 kilometres away from civilisation, in dense Queensland bushland where I would never be found.

To begin with it was scary. All new sounds and smells and I lay awake wondering how long it would be before someone found my body if I died here.

I "acquired" a book of survival techniques and worked to make the bush my home. Together, with two friends and my dog, we dug holes for fires and toilets, built our own makeshift shower, wove leaves and twigs together to make solid structures to sleep under. With a lot of effort, we managed to grow an edible garden that kept all three of us fed for the next 12 months.

One of the guys broke his ankle chasing after the dog one morning and we had to make a splint for his leg and do his chores (which included the 5-kilometre walk to the river for water each day). I got lost trekking back to our camp during a storm one night and spent the night clinging to a tree only to find that when the sun came up, I was about 12 steps away from home.

Today, people are shocked to hear that I was once homeless, but in reality, being homeless is what made me who I am today.

I would never want to do it again, but I'm glad I did it just the same.

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Gary - Realities Of Life On The Street

Gary - Realities Of Life On The Street

My name is Gary. I moved out of a drug house, so I'm homeless. I couldn't handle being around drugs anymore. 

I made a choice in my life to discard that part of my life and people who associate with drugs because, and it took me a fair while to realise, but it was stuffing my life up beyond the point of being able to think straight.

One day I had an epiphany and I just walked out — literally. I came down to the South Coast to get away but once I moved here I discovered that the ice epidemic is just as bad here as it is in Sydney.

A mate came and picked me up. He just took me away. That was about five months ago, but I've been homeless for nearly two years. Even though I'm in a worse situation now I feel safer not being near the drug. It makes my life a lot easier.

When people walk past me, they look at me like I'm a piece of crap because I don't look healthy, but when you're homeless you can't really afford to get on the drugs in the long run because everything is so expensive.

You can't just go out and buy a week's worth of food, you can't go and shower whenever you want, things like that.

People categorise you like "because he's living in a tent, he's homeless, he's a druggie, he's a grub". In my eyes, I'm trying to do the best I can. 

It's a Catch 22 situation: you can get on the drugs and be homeless or you can make an effort like I am to live just a little bit easier. It's still hard being homeless because in the long run the public still look at you, frowning. It's hard to know what people are thinking.

I think people should take the time to consider what life is like in my shoes. They'll realise that life is not easy. I know life isn't meant to be easy, but it's 10 times harder when you don't have anywhere to live and you're trying to be clean and respectful.

Being a holiday town, real estates can put any price they want on a rental. They [can] choose anyone, of many, who are looking at homes and I'm unemployed and that's frowned upon. 

The real estates have it all stitched up around here and dealing with the Department of Housing is like banging your head against a brick wall. I end up feeling that, in the long run, I haven't gone anywhere. 

Contributed with assistance from the Shoalhaven Homeless Hub.

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Sally - Realities Of Life On The Street

Sally - Realities Of Life On The Street

When you leave your husband you end up with nothing a lot of the time. It's like your house has burnt down but nobody cares. No-one wants to know about it and you have to start again.

My husband had an alcohol problem, but he told me he was going to change. It interfered with his work and relationships. He told me that he was going to change and I was stupid enough to believe him. 

Not knowing a lot about addiction I thought I could help him to control his habit, but as stresses in his life and our lives got bigger he just went back to the alcohol. I was pregnant and trying to feed our four children and he lost jobs because he was drinking. 

I tried to regulate him by cutting down the amount of alcohol he could drink, but it just made him angry towards me. Every time he'd drink, he'd take it out on my eldest son and me.

I didn't have any money and we had nowhere else to go. I had a son in high school, so I couldn't just pull him out and go back to where I grew up. I had nobody there anyway. It was quite embarrassing and I was ashamed because I didn't want to say that I had put my children in a situation where we had nowhere to live.

I had my sister. We stayed with her one night, but I could tell that she couldn't handle having us there. I rang the homelessness place to try and get us some temporary accommodation till I could figure out what to do. They put us in a hotel for a week and then we went to a refuge.

From the refuge, Mission Australia provided us with temporary accommodation in a transitional property. The accommodation was good. It was really good. It was a furnished property with beds and linen. They'd given us everything because I had left with nothing except my car.

I though I'd be there [at the transitional house] for less than three months. I thought that my husband would decide that his family was more important than his drinking. He'd actually gotten worse. We were in the transitional housing for a year in the end because it was hard to find a new home. Also because I was hoping I might be able to go back to the relationship.

I started looking for a house to rent. Having an excellent rental history I thought in would be quite easy, but when you are looking for a place with five children it isn't. Many don't want to rent to a single mum with five kids.

I used to think that people who can't find a place to live must have done something wrong. They must have ruined a house or something like that. Or not paid their rent.

I didn't realise it was something that could happen to anybody just because of circumstances that are beyond your control. I didn't think that children would be seen as a liability in renting a house or realise the stigma attached to being a single mum.

Just because you have a large family and you're by yourself doesn't mean you should have nowhere to live. I only found about four places we could afford. There are not a lot of properties to choose from, so the real estate agents and the owners can be very very picky about whom they rent to here.

They'd rather get someone who's a working couple or an older couple and I can understand that as well. I felt like I was at the bottom of the list.

Eventually we found this three-bedroom house. It was stressful to move, but it still felt good to have our own home and to have our things in it. We've got a 12 month lease now and it's really nice.

I haven't told a lot of my friends what happened. I felt embarrassed to be homeless. It was embarrassing to me that I'd done that to my children.

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Allan Barry - Realities Of Life On The Street

Allan Barry - Realities Of Life On The Street

My name is Allan Barry. I became homeless because I had to have a heart operation and I just started a new job. When they found out I had to have three months off work because I had to have the operation I got fired, which wasn't very nice on their part.

Once you get fired it makes it very difficult to pay rent, so I got evicted from where I was staying. For four and a half years I couch-surfed at friend's places. After a while you don't become friends because you're in each other's pockets, so then I started living on the streets.

Me, in particular, I didn't find living on the streets that hard, because I didn't have any drug or alcohol problems.

I did have mental health issues though, because I'm a gay man. And I didn't like being gay, but recently I've just turned 50, and I figured once I turned 50, if you don't like me for who I am, it's just too bad. Since I've made that decision I've never had so much fun.

I never found being homeless difficult because I made all the right smart decisions. People who are affected by drugs and alcohol make silly choices, like sleeping in doorways and in sleeping bags. People can walk past and kick them and they don't have much opportunity to get out, because they are trapped in their sleeping bag.

If you're living on the streets, you know you could get bashed at any moment. The streets are quite violent.

Like anybody else a mobile phone is your lifeline: it's communication with friends and family. If somebody is harassing you or you are being threatened at least you can phone the police. If you've got one of those smart phones then during the boredom times you could play games or get on Facebook to kill the time. I would say a phone, whether you are homeless or not, happens to be everybody's lifeline.

Through being homeless I've been to a couple of organisations that help the homeless, which helped me with showers and breakfast in the mornings. The first time I went to one of those places I cried.

I cried and I cried, and I figured out why am I crying for? I figured that's the Lord's way of saying this is what I need to do. So at the moment I am currently not homeless, I'm living in a nice apartment in West Perth, and I'm volunteering for the homeless shelters.

When I was homeless I didn't have to pay rent, I didn't have to pay electricity, because you just use power points around the city to charge your mobile phone, DVD or computer or whatever you have, and you get free food from these organisations.

So at the moment life is rosy I'm back on my feet and helping other people, and I'm getting a great pleasure out of helping other people.

I do a lot of busking because I am an entertainer, if that doesn't' work and I don't make it as a singer, I'm very funny — I'll make it as a comedian. 

And if worse comes to worse and nothing else comes out of those I'll do a Kim Kardashian and make my own sex tape. It worked for her so why can't it work for me?

But apart from that no, I didn't find being homeless that difficult, but as I said I haven't got drug or alcohol issues. 

It's taken me a long time to get where I am going. I'm heading in the right direction, I'm quite happy. I don't think I'll ever suffer depression again, because if you don't accept me for who I am, well then you can get out of my life.

At the time when I was going through hard times I hated it, but now I can appreciate it, because at the moment everything I am touching is turning to gold. At the moment I feel like the world is my oyster and I happen to be the pearl. So I'm smiling and laughing every day.

I do cry a lot still. But there is a big different between happy and sad tears, and these tears are happiness.

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John - Realities Of Living On The Street

John - Realities Of Living On The Street

John Reading spent nine years homeless in Brisbane and on the Gold Coast after his marriage broke down. 

Losing it all

I just left everything — the house, the cars, the pool — but all of a sudden only seeing (the kids) for a few hours once a fortnight, that just wrecks you — crying on the train on the way home. I didn't care about anything: all the goals and dreams disappeared and I ended up on the street.

You're alienated and you don't know where to sleep, so you get drunk because it didn't matter where you sleep ... you're numb.

It was a bit exciting at first too: you're doing all this walking so you're keeping fit — it's all a bit of a laugh — but then you realise you're sinking into depression. The only thing you can do to face the day is to drink. You start drinking at seven o'clock in the morning and you just don't stop ... until you get sick. 

These places (boarding houses) are very depressing. Everyone's down in the dumps, whether it be drugs, alcohol, broken relationships ... the atmosphere is horrid and the last thing you want to do is come back. 

Jail

The gambling got really bad because you're doing anything to have a break from your situation so ... you start a life of crime just to feed your habit. It got real bad and I ended up going to jail for two years.

It actually was a bit of a blessing. I had a job and the facilities were better ... it was kind of like rehab. That's one way to look at it anyway, lots of bad things happened in there.

The first night I got out of there, I slept on a park bench opposite the casino in the (Brisbane) city. It was like you're back in the wrong crowd. 

Sleeping rough

You move around from place to place and you're always running into trouble, different people blowing in. You start to lose your mind from the artificial substances. It's an atmosphere of violence and hatred and crime.

There's different types of Streeties. Ones that are just out for themselves, but there are some that are kind. You go your own way in the day, but at night you might share a meal together.

Someone in Brisbane said to me, "If you're living on the streets, why don't you go down to the Gold Coast and live on the streets".

I set up little squat (at the back of a community centre in Tugun) because it had BBQs, hot water — luxury! But because I wasn't carrying on, the lady who ran it would say, "Good morning, John" because I didn't leave a mess or try and break in.

You got lonely, especially when you're sober. At night, that's when it hits you. You're by yourself under one of those shelters and when it's raining. You're freezing and then you just think about all your mistakes and all the things that happened.

When you're on the street you get into a rut. You have no ambition or initiative, you can't get out of it after all those years ... you need someone to push you. I got some help from some of the employment agencies.

Finding home and family

I've been here five years now. When I first came in here (to this unit), I couldn't go in the bedroom and I couldn't be in the house, so I slept out on the balcony and I didn't use it for a month. I'm thinking, "someone's going to come and and tell me where to go, I don't belong here".

I miss the exercise ... because you're always walking when you're on the street. You have to be active otherwise you go insane.

It's like I've developed my character — empathy or wisdom. It's like half the surface crap has gone. Because you've hit rock bottom and your heart got ripped out. The only thing you can do is fill it up with good things.

I've got this nice place - you've got the facilities to look normal, you can have a good sleep... and you can read a good book and not get disturbed.

Plus, I was alienated from my family, that was terrible but ... I've reconnected with my sister Leah and that helped me.... yeah, they mean a lot to me because they're my family.

It's like God gave me one back.

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