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  2020-05-26

  Homeless being turned away as cool weather pushes Safe Space shelter to capacity

  As Tasmanians, saturated in the flood of online media content, look on at the state of the world, feelings range from extreme anxiety, compassion with those in crisis centres, to smug repose (“at least we are not in that country”). This last response seems particularly rife today, but it struggles to conceal an inherent coldness which we don’t otherwise normally like to attribute to ourselves. Not only does this attitude overlook that fact that we have our own dead, or that the cost of life is of a value that far outpaces numerical value (comparing our figures with death-tolls in other places), we ignore those without home in the very place in which all of us are meant to dwell together. Prior to the lockdown, Tasmania’s capital city Hobart underwent a housing crisis. But as we wait on Canberra to get things moving along - exactly as they were before or, even better than before - we should keep in mind that not everything is possible just because money is behind it. To return to the housing crisis: this challenges all of us to think about our responsibility towards those forgotten in our own home. Genuine responsibility begins with compassion, not money. I feel like, too often, we reverse the formula.