Lack of housing and refuges bites even harder in winter with health issues exacerbated for South Coast homeless

In the last two years, his health has deteriorated rapidly and he has suffered multiple bouts of pneumonia due to repeated exposure to the cold.

Uncle Lewis has been supported by services in the area to access temporary accommodation through motels, but said he can only access those services for four nights per week. Other nights he stays with friends in the community.

But beds with friends are becoming few and far between.

When ACM met with Uncle Lewis in early June he was staying in a spare room with Aunty Kath Jones in her flat in Bega. Ms Jones said she had never seen the housing situation as bad as it had been in her community over the last two years due to multiple natural disasters and the pandemic.

"He's not the only one, I've got another homeless girl at the moment, so since she's been there Uncle Lewis has been staying at the motel to let her have the room because she's a woman," Ms Jones said.

Mr Campbell's deteriorating health means he has been working towards getting onto the priority housing list, but homelessness services in the Bega Valley said it could still take between six months to two years before someone was placed, depending on the state of their health.

"The priority list is for people like Uncle Lewis that are homeless on the street and it's causing them health conditions like pneumonia, so hopefully he'll be eligible for whatever comes up," Ms Jones said.

"He just wants somewhere where he's warm, safe, somewhere to wash and cook - that's all he needs."

Mr Campbell wanted to highlight the vital need for more government funding for additional hostels or refuges on the Far South Coast.

According to homelessness services, there exists a women's refuge in Bega and Moruya, as well as a youth hostel for people aged 16-17. However, the closest hostel that would take in men was in Batemans Bay.

Katungul Aboriginal Corporation Regional Health and Community Services CEO Kayleen Brown said housing was the fundamental determinate for health within the Indigenous community.

She said without sufficient food and housing, an individual's capacity to make informed decisions about their wellbeing was limited, "because you're living day to day".

She said it was not uncommon for her to be contacted every couple of days about a family or community member that was becoming homeless. She described the housing situation as "out of control" with wait times on social housing of up to 10 years.

"For people who are struggling with their mental health or AOD [Alcohol and Other Drugs] or whatever else is going on for them, what hope is there when someone says you're not going to have somewhere to live for 10 years?"

She said, hypothetically, even if there was sufficient funding to to close the gap in health, it still wouldn't be possible unless people had access to adequate housing.

"They are just going to present with pneumonia and other symptoms constantly at the ED and when they get discharged or leave the clinic they just get sick again," she said.

She said it was common in the Aboriginal community that family and community members would take in people experiencing homelessness where they could, but services were seeing the compounding effects of households taking in someone with a range of complex health and mental health issues.

"It's also impacting the out-of-home care for kids. For them to be placed with family, they need to have an appropriate room or space, and so if there's no housing and people have three households merged to financially survive, these kids aren't able to stay with their family," she said.

Donna Davis from Mission Australia in Bega said in her 12 years of working in the sector, she had never seen so many community members needing to access services in the region due to homelessness.

She said there were people in the Bega Valley staying in caravans or tents, however Mission Australia's priority was always to get them out of the elements, especially during winter.

Ms Davis said both physical and mental health issues were exacerbated by the freezing conditions in the area during wintertime.

"If you are homeless or sleeping rough and you end up with pneumonia, chances are you're going to end up staying sick for a long time and it just won't ease at all," she said.

Ms Davis said the number of single men aged over 55 experiencing homeless had also increased significantly over the last 12 months, likely due to the trickling down impact in the lack of availability in the private rental market.

"If you're on Newstart there's nothing affordable here, so what does that mean? And for our Indigenous community, this is home, they're on country, we can't be expecting them to move out of the area," she said.