On the last Tuesday morning of February, between the hours of 1am and 3am, Angus and I walked through the streets of Sydney, taking part in the annual homeless street count.
This is an important annual event organised by the City of Sydney. The aim is to collect up-to-date statistics on the number of people sleeping rough in the city and surrounding suburbs. This was our first street count as volunteers (one of the other volunteers was kind enough to take this snap of us).
The night itself was a great experience for us. We were two of 180 volunteers that were allocated a particular zone within the Sydney LGA. We worked in pairs. My partner was a Case Worker for the Department of Communities and Justice and we both learned a lot about one another’s work. Our particular zone consisted mainly of busy roads and the backs of large apartments in the Glebe/Ultimo area. As expected, we found all those in our zone who were sleeping rough in a small park. Wentworth Park was particularly populous in our area with those using it as their home.
I was impressed by the way the City organisers instructed and equipped us to manage our work. We were reminded that we were essentially entering into the homes or personal space of people on the streets and needed to consider them with respect and sensitivity.
The results of the count show that we are slightly up on 2023 for those people who are sleeping rough (i.e. on the streets) at 280 vs 277. However the big jump is with those in assisted or temporary housing, jumping to 392 from 299 in 2023. This is a big concern for Sydney’s Homelessness services, which are already at capacity. It is also part of a bigger post-covid trend that reveals the desperate position that more people are in who are either sleeping on the streets or in emergency accommodation.
The numbers bear out what we are seeing at Rough Edges. Now opening from Monday to Thursday nights, we are seeing a minimum of 50 people and sometimes as many as 100 people coming in for meals.
More work is needed at a higher level to reduce these numbers. In the meantime, Rough Edges continues to provide a place of warmth and hospitality for those who need it.
Number of people counted each February since 2010. Data from City of Sydney