Ten weeks ago, Peter Watson fell off a wall. He shattered one of his feet and broke the other. Tonight he will sleep rough, with his wheelchair and moon boots, a short distance from Queensland’s glitzy Gold Coast tourist strip.
“It’s agony all day, most days. Doesn’t make it easy being in a wheelchair and living on the streets at the same time,” he said.
Peter is one of an estimated thousands of homeless people on the Gold Coast facing uncertainty after a council crackdown. The City of Gold Coast Council rangers are now proactively patrolling homeless hotspots, closing tent cities, issuing move on orders and bringing in the police in an approach it calls “compliance-led”.
The Gold Coast mayor, Tom Tate, has publicly stated he wants the homeless moved across the border to Byron Bay.
“I’m happy to get them a bus and, if they want to, take them to Byron Bay to enjoy the lifestyle down there,” mayor Tate said, although he later claimed his comments were “tongue in cheek”.
Watson was in hospital for three weeks, then for six in temporary accommodation. He couldn’t afford the place once the subsidy ran out. He has not been offered state government assistance through its hotel motel scheme. He says he’d take anything.
“Living on the streets, you don’t eat properly, you don’t freaking sleep properly you’re always freaking on edge, the body doesn’t repair itself unless you’re getting good sleep,” he said.
“So I might be a bit longer in the chair than I need be, but I know I’m gonna walk again. That’s one good thing”.
He knows there are people who don’t want him there. Without prompting, he brings up the recent comments by Tate.
‘It’s supposed to be nice at the Gold Coast’
According to a report presented to the Gold Coast council this week the city’s compliance-led approach has had a number of “positive results,” including “deterring people experiencing homelessness from moving to the Gold Coast local government area”.
The report recommended adopting a new “place-based” approach. Rather than just responding to complaints, rangers would “routinely patrol priority public spaces”.
Gold Coast councillors this week unanimously voted to consider doubling down on moving on homeless people from parks.
A spokesperson for council said the report on the city’s approach to homelessness compliance will be considered at its meeting on 5 May.
Homeless advocates have refused to participate, and council has been kicked off the roundtable of local homelessness services.
But with community complaints against tent cities on the glitter strip escalating despite the crackdown, is there room for both rich and poor in Queensland’s tourist mecca?
Peter believes the reason people complain about the homeless is simple.
“It just makes it look messy, like it’s supposed to be nice at the Gold Coast, you know?” he said.
Nowhere to go
This month, the Gold Coast overtook Sydney to become Australia’s most expensive rental market. The median weekly rent is $900, with a rental vacancy rate persistently sitting at a near record low 1%.
According to research from the US, homelessness is caused by a lack of available rentals, and high rents relative to incomes. Homelessness is a housing problem, it says, not an individual failing caused by drugs, unemployment or mental illness. There are simply more people than homes, the research says.
As a result, there is a rapidly growing archipelago of tents spreading across south-east Queensland.
From last May to the end of February, the Gold Coast received 3,379 homelessness-related requests, an average of 338 a month. Some of them were double-ups about the same locations.
Councils have acted, with Brisbane, the Gold Coast, and Moreton Bay councils adopting a routine program of homeless clearances. In March, the supreme court of Queensland found that City of Moreton Bay had not treated homeless people “like humans” during an unlawful tent city clearance last year, and had a legal obligation only to move people only after offering them appropriate accommodation.
The chair of the Gold Coast Homelessness Network, Maria Leebeeck, said despite an olive branch from council extended this week, services won’t let council access their meetings and information without changes. She wants council to either backflip to an earlier approach, offering help rather than compliance or at least adopt a more health and welfare focus.
Many homeless people and advocates suggested designating a specific plot of land for a homeless encampment, out of sight. Leebeeck said it would have to have toilets and showers, and might be an idea worth trying but has failed in the past.
The current approach can’t be working, Leebeck says. There are more complaints now then there have ever been.
“The issue here is people have nowhere to go, so they will go to Nerang. So then Nerang will just get more complaints, and then that’ll be the priority location, until they push them out of Narang and they’ll go back to Southport,” she said.
“We’re not dealing with the issue, which is that we need people to be housed, that’s the challenge”.
The Gold Coast concedes in this week’s report that its approach has resulted in “moving individuals from one public space to another”.
“There are several examples of repeat compliance efforts with the same individuals at new locations”.
It said others were not eligible for state government help.
It’s just so hard’
Tony Sue has a titanium rod holding his jaw in place. It was shattered when he was assaulted. He also needs a walker for a spinal problem.
He has been moved on by the Gold Coast six times in the last year.
“It’s impossible to find a house, I’ve pushed the friendships. And I’m pretty tough too, I suppose, so I just can roll with it,” he said.
He was moved on two days ago from one of the most visible parks in the Gold Coast. Sue will sleep tonight in a different park. Being moved on hasn’t helped, he says, it’s made it worse.
“You get a plan (to get out of homelessness), and you even put it into action and then you get moved on. And everything’s like, bang! You got to start again. Phones, they get stolen or lost, it’s just so hard, it’s so hard,” he said.
There are 58,927 people on Queensland’s social housing waiting list.