During her 14 months on Queensland’s bulging social-housing waiting list, Sarah Paasi has learned that warm places to pass a winter’s night include car park staircases, storm drains and tunnels.
But the most pressing problem for the 26-year-old Brisbane woman on the nights she sleeps rough is what to do with her baby boy, Marcus.
“He’s a fucking genius,” Paasi says. “I gotta tell you man, he’s the smartest one-and-a-bit-year-old I’ve ever met. And he’s a really well-behaved baby.”
Paasi’s concern for Marcus, though, is that he has “never known what it is like to have his own room with his stuff in it”, where he can go and have quiet time.
“He has no routine,” Paasi says. “He just has to get comfortable wherever we are, or wherever we’re going in life.”
For a time that included motel rooms but Paasi says that “obviously just isn’t affordable for anyone, especially homeless people”. Mainly it involves surfing the couches of friends and relatives.
On the nights she has to sleep rough, Paasi tries to leave Marcus with his paternal grandparents. However, it is often too uncomfortable for her to stay because Marcus’s father, Paasi’s partner of almost a decade, spends much of his time there.
“Our relationship fell apart because we were so stressed and broke and homeless,” Paasi says. “Homelessness has literally fucked my whole life.”
Paasi is one of thousands of Queenslanders approved for social housing who have no house to go to.
A report released this week by Queensland’s auditor general, Brendan Worrall, found 30,922 households – more than 50,000 people – on the state’s housing register, a figure which has grown by 78% since 2018.
That figure might be inaccurate – which is only compounding the problem. Worrall found the state government was failing to keep an accurate waiting list and manage its existing stock.
The biggest problem, though, is that they are not building enough homes.
Queensland’s housing department continues to spruik the $2.9bn investment for social and affordable housing committed in the 2021 budget, which included $1bn towards a Housing Investment Fund.
“This investment means we can house more vulnerable Queenslanders sooner,” a spokesperson says.
The government says it will start construction on 7,400 new homes by June 2025. Worrall’s report, though, deemed those plans unlikely to cut the waiting list, likely to be exacerbated by rising interest rates and a tightening rental market.
For many, it has been a long wait already. In Bradley Tull’s case, it has been almost four years.
The 43-year-old has spent most of that time in supported accommodation – a tough environment for a man like Tull. Since he was hit by a truck in the streets of Innisfail and acquired a brain injury 20 years ago, he has kept mostly to himself.
“It was like being in a prison,” Tull says of the shared living space.
Tull recently moved to his own place in Mango Hill, currently covered by NDIS funding. It is an improvement, though too small to have his three boys – aged eight, six and four – stay over. But it is just the sort of thing Tull is hoping to have as long-term shelter.
“Somewhere I can call home,” he says. “Where I can have my boys over and everything. I miss seeing my boys.”
But though Tull is stuck in limbo while the state grapples with a housing crisis, he is also testament to the life-changing power of government.
NDIS funding and the daily visits from support workers make a “very big difference” in Tull’s life.
So much so, Tull decided to act on an ambition he has harboured since he lay in a coma for six months, two decades ago.
He was a “big boy” back then – “137 kilos” – and the nurses, who were all women, could not easily move him. Tull often woke with bedsores.
“So I believe there needs to be more male nurses,” he says.
With his new lease on life, this is something Tull aims to help address. He is now preparing to study nursing.
“I’ve started to think: ‘I want to do this’,” he says. “I want to get back to living a normal life again.”
