By KATH GANNAWAY
CHANGES to planning laws in Yarra Ranges could go a long way in helping get homeless young people off the street, off other people’s couches and into secure, low-cost accommodation.
The lack of a roof above their heads, and the impediments placed by state and local planning regulations was a recurring theme when the Mail spoke to the people at the coalface of youth homelessness last week.
With former Yarra Ranges mayor Tim Heenan again sleeping rough in Melba Park in Lilydale to mark Homelessness Week, the issue that gets very little ‘air play’ at any other time of the year, is pushed to the surface.
Mr Heenan said this year, over the nine days, has been largely focused on ways of connecting with people in an effort to stop them becoming homeless. However, he said there was also a need to deal with the ‘not in my backyard’ mentality that stopped people who may be willing and able to provide small scale accommodation for someone.
Allowing bungalow accommodation in areas that are now restricted was an obvious solution, he said.
“Even if you look at the current situation with dependant person’s units (bungalows), we were always told at council that once that dependant person died, the unit had to go.
“It’s just rubbish.
“The rules need to be changed and that requires State Government, council and the community to make the changes,” he said.
“When you ask about the negative consequences, they’re virtually none.”
Neal Taylor, CEO and community worker with Holy Fools in Lilydale said there was no doubt that youth are the big demographic in Yarra Ranges.
Holy Fools works with homeless people and people who are at risk of becoming homeless from their Lilydale base, and has recently started doing a community lunch on Thursdays in Yarra Junction.
Reports of people sleeping out in Queen’s Park and at the Yarra Glen racetrack in summer leave him in no doubt that the problem exists across the board.
“I don’t know where they go in winter,” he said.
Unlike the city where homelessness is very much out in the open, Mr Taylor said it was hidden in the hills and the Yarra Valley where even kids were sleeping rough; they were couch surfing, moving from place to place, sleeping in their cars or living in boarding houses.
“A lot of guys we deal with are also very reluctant to go out because of the stigma attached – they do their best to blend so as to not be identified as being homeless,” he said.
He said what was needed was basic homes that were comfortable but within people’s means.
That could be bungalows, but there are other options that could help relieve the situation almost immediately.
“Student accommodation at the Swinburne campus is still empty and could be used for crisis accommodation,” he said.
He said the organisation was talking with Yarra Ranges Mayor Maria McCathy around the issue of multiple dwellings and ways of making permits for buildings such as bungalows easier to get through council.
Pastor Andy Bennett from River Valley Church in Millgrove said bungalows were a win-win that would not only create affordable housing and a secure home-base for someone who was homeless, but would potentially help pay a mortgage for someone under mortgage stress.
“I understand the fear behind it, but if there could be some flexibility in some of the planning laws around the green wedge and the notion of independent bungalows, it could massively improve the homeless situation,” he said.
“There’s no doubt that planning laws have a considerable role to play in addressing homelessness in Yarra Ranges.”
