There are only three residents left in Huntly Lions Park, a campground just north of Bendigo’s city centre. In August, the council rezoned the land and told everyone living there in tents and caravans they had 14 days to leave.
Council staff say the decision was in response to some residents not “feeling safe” when visiting the park and because the site was unsuitable for long-term living. But Lee-Anne Gray, who has been living at the campground since January, refuses to leave because she has nowhere else to go.
She became homeless after losing her job and rental and has been unable to find another home, according to Damian Stock, the chief executive of Arc Justice, a community legal centre advising Gray on her rights.
As the housing and cost of living crisis deepens, a growing number of Australians have turned to public land and campgrounds to set up makeshift homes until there is a better option. That has forced local councils to grapple with a social issue they argue is caused by the failure of other levels of government – particularly of the states – to build enough social and emergency housing.
While some councils have evicted people experiencing homelessness from public campgrounds, as in Bendigo, others have allowed them to stay indefinitely and – in some cases – have even installed temporary facilities for them. But even where councillors are sympathetic, they often have to confront opposition from residents to the ad hoc camping arrangements, ranging from disquiet to outright hostility.
No long-term solutions
Stock says the whole housing system in the Bendigo region is “jammed”, and it has only got worse since the floods hit.
“The rezoning was done intentionally to discourage or prevent people from being able to stay there overnight,” he says. “And it’s in the context when there is no other short-term or emergency housing availability in Bendigo.
“Due to the floods we’ve got entire towns that have been relocated to Bendigo with people that have nowhere to live and it’s all without the emergency or transitional accommodation [needed] before.”
The CEO of services provider Haven; Home, Safe, Trudi Ray, says a number of the people who were asked to leave the Bendigo campground are now in emergency accommodation while the charity searches for other housing.
“Where they are is not a long-term option,” she says. “Some of them don’t have kitchens; it’s really offered as a respite.”
In Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, about 30 people living at Wilks Park campground were also handed eviction notices by the council in July. The council reversed the decision days later, but most of the residents have since been evacuated due to floods.
The NSW Department of Communities and Justice says the people have been found accommodation, but did not specify what type.
Rod Kendall, a councillor for the region, says a number of the social houses in Wagga Wagga are in a state of disrepair and he worries a long-term solution for people experiencing homelessness will not be found anytime soon.
Eurobodalla shire on the NSW south coast faces a similar housing crisis, but the council there has tried to take a different approach, allowing about 60 people living at Moruya North Head campground to stay on council land as long as they need and installing hot showers for their use.
“A lot of people were displaced when the prices here went through the roof – they went up by 50% in some areas,” says the mayor, Mathew Hatcher. “People who were born here and lived here all their life were being evicted because the house they rented was sold off to someone who wanted a holiday home.”
The area also lost almost 500 homes during the black summer bushfires.
“We decided we can’t kick people out [of the campgrounds],” says Hatcher, who acknowledges some locals weren’t happy. “They wouldn’t be there if they had another option.”
‘It doesn’t have to be like that’
Hidden between the scrub on the sand dunes of a beach in Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, which is bookended by some of the wealthiest towns in the state, is the four-person tent where 25-year-old Wilbur lives. He has been living on the foreshore for two years and is among the estimated 1,000 people sleeping rough in the community.
Last week Wilbur, who asked that his full name not be published, had to move sites after people stole money and belongings from where he was camping.
After graduating from high school he found it difficult to remain steady with his study and work due to mental health challenges. Until recently, he was working four days a week at a cafe.
Wilbur says he feels “quite free” knowing 75% of his income is not going towards rent, but he would like the option of social housing if it was available. “Five years from now, I don’t want to be here,” he says.
Jeremy Maxwell, the CEO of the homelessness charity Southern Peninsula Community Support, which provides support to Wilbur and others sleeping rough, says during the pandemic the council allowed people to sleep in campgrounds.
Some locals objected that the decision was “importing a problem” by making the “rules too friendly”.
But Maxwell says it just made the existing crisis visible.
“What we really had was a bunch of people who were already camping illegally along the foreshore, or sleeping in their cars, or couch surfing, and they were just given a legal option.
“People want it to be nice and sanitised, they don’t want to see the neighbour that is now living at the campground because they can’t afford to live anywhere else.”
The Mornington Peninsula council recently changed the bylaws so people found camping illegally were not required to be immediately moved on.
It also opened 12 sites at a campground over summer for people experiencing homelessness.
Some locals expressed concern online about “slums” developing and the impact on tourism, and argued the 12 sites would attract people who wanted the “million dollar views” from the foreshore. Others were aghast campsites rather than housing were the solution to the homelessness crisis.
The mayor, Anthony Marsh, has been advocating for the state government to invest more in social housing.
“There was talk … where we said, ‘What’s the solution here?’” he says. “Do we just open this up further and effectively make a tent city? There was this sense of how ridiculous the conversation was that we were having, that we had to contemplate that.”
Trina Jones, the CEO of Homelessness NSW, warns makeshift housing should not become the standard for last resort accommodation.
“It doesn’t have to be like that,” she says. “We urgently need investment from the state government to support specialist homelessness services and to invest in housing.”
A Homes Victoria spokesperson said 26 social housing units had been completed recently or were under construction on the Mornington Peninsula, and 275 in Bendigo.
A NSW Department of Planning and Environment spokesperson said the number of social housing units in the state had increased by 10% over the past 10 years, above the national average.
But building social housing takes time, and Hatcher says the crisis is here now. He says Eurobodalla’s approach is a positive step until there is a better option.
Lachlan Fuzzard, of the homelessness charity the Family Place, says if people were not at the Moruya campground, they would probably be scattered across the shire, camping illegally in potentially unsafe conditions.
“You can sometimes then lose track of them,” he says. “We go out to the campgrounds almost daily … so we’re able to get a lot more traction with helping them with what they need.”
