Who are the Homeless?

National Homeless Persons’ Week 2010 starts today and runs until Sunday. It aims to raise awareness of homelessness in the community, celebrate and acknowledge current services being offered to homeless people, foster collaboration of services working with the homeless and attract more volunteers and financial support into the sector.

Every day this week on my radio programme I’ll be talking to people who serve Perth’s homeless community.

Today’s guest was Beth Innes, Project Officer Red Cross. I spoke to Beth about the growing problem of homelessness and discussed the fact that contrary to the sterotypical view of the homeless being older down and out men, over 40% of the homeless in Perth are under 18.

Families are living in cars; people who have jobs can’t afford the fuel to get to work; rent increases mean that parents can no longer put a roof over their family’s heads.

You can hear our discussion by clicking play on the audio player at the bottom of this post.

[audio:http://mpegmedia.sonshinefm.ws/feeds/MOR080210_1152.mp3]

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About the author

Rodney Olsen

Rodney is a husband, father, cyclist, blogger and podcaster from Perth Western Australia.

He previously worked in radio for about 25 years but these days he spends his time at Compassion Australia, working towards releasing children from poverty in Jesus' name.

The views he expresses here are his own.

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