Give a Dollar a Week, End Homelessness in a Year

Imagine a society where the collective community could make a direct impact on some of our country's biggest social issues. Imagine crowd-funding an end to homelessness.

In theory, it's simple. If every Australian gave $1 a week for a year, that would be over $23 Million dollars a week for 52 weeks. That's $1.2 billion in a year. It works the same way that our taxes do, just on a smaller scale. But instead of having an elected group of representatives choose where to spend our money, we could designate where our contributions go. 

Before I get too far in to my grand ambitious idea, I’d like to stress that this is not solely my idea, or even a new one. I first discovered this concept in a stunning book a friend gave me called A Fraction of The Whole by Steve Toltz. Since then I’ve also discovered Huey Long’s plan to Share the Wealth in 1934, along with a few other interesting articles, like this one on what would happen if the world’s total wealth was redistributed amongst everyone in the world equally. And this one on homelessness. Our values as a race are very slowly shifting, and society is starting to question the status quo.

For now, I’d like to discuss a very small change each of us could make that could have massive impact on Australia as a country. Bear in mind that I’m not an expert. I’ve collected some research, made a few calculations and drawn some conclusions. I make no assertions that they are correct. I'm human. Please feel free to do your own research and calculations. Maybe you will come to a different conclusion.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), in 2011-2012 the average household worth of all households in Australia was about $728,000. But the median was $434,000. This was due to the asymmetric distribution of that wealth – the top 20% had about 60% of the wealth, the top 40% had about 81% of the total wealth, and the bottom 60% of the population had about 18% of the total wealth. (The extra 1% is due to rounding down. It's still in there somewhere.) They also gave the statistics that over 1.2 million households had net worth less than $50,000, with 114,000 of these households having negative net worth.

There are about 23.66 million people in Australia as of November 13^th 2014. As mentioned above, if every one of them donated $1 a week, or had someone donate on their behalf if they don’t fit into the 67.5% of Australian taxpayers, there would be a pool of about $23 million to distribute every week to those dis-advantaged families. If we started with the people who have negative net wealth, and distributed it evenly between the 114,000 people, they would then receive about $200 a week. It doesn’t seem like a lot, right?

Here’s where the next stage of my idea comes in.

The definition of homelessness, as per the ABS definition established in 2012 is the following;

“When a person does not have suitable accommodation alternatives they are considered homeless if their current living arrangement:

·         is in a dwelling that is inadequate; or

·         has no tenure, or if their initial tenure is short and not extendable; or

·         does not allow them to have control of, and access to space for social relations.

The ABS definition of homelessness is informed by an understanding of homelessness as 'home'lessness, not rooflessness. It emphasises the core elements of 'home' in Anglo American and European interpretations of the meaning of home as identified in research evidence (Mallett, 2004). These elements may include: a sense of security, stability, privacy, safety, and the ability to control living space. Homelessness is therefore a lack of one or more of the elements that represent 'home'.”

As of 2011, Homelessness Australia gives the figures of people experiencing homelessness as 1 in 200 people, or about 105,000 people. This is spread fairly evenly among age ranges, from children under 12 to over 75’s. More than a quarter of those are under 18 – roughly 28,000 children. And 6% – or about 6300 people – are currently living on the streets or in make-shift dwellings such as tents.

I have a couple of friends who fit under the heading of ‘Home-less’ simply because they don’t have the money to move out of their current situation into one where there aren’t too many people crammed into a tiny space. They have no opportunity to ‘control their living space’. Occasionally, when there’s no one else home, they can have people over for social interactions, but most of the time, they’re expected to go out to be social or sit in their room and be quiet to minimise the impact on the ‘important people’ in the house. What would it be worth to them to be able to have their own space?

During my periods of intermittent work, I experienced the very real fear that I could soon be ‘home’-less. Which could quickly have turned into ‘roof’-lessness without the support of my family and friends, who were there for me through the difficult times. What about those who don’t have access to support from their friends and family? They would have nowhere to go, and no way out. You can’t get a job without a house. Wouldn’t it be nice to have the community extend a helping hand?

Imagine walking past a homeless person on the street and dropping $200 into their bowl. I know I’d feel pretty amazing if I could do that. Wouldn’t you? So why don’t we? What’s stopping us?

I can’t answer that for you. I know I don’t because I have bills I have to pay, groceries I have to buy, and when I do have spare money, I have a car in serious need of repairs. I can’t afford to give away $200 just like that. But I can afford $1 a week. I’m betting that you can too.

While doing my research for this, I found out that the Greens have a plan to end homelessness by 2020. As stated on their website;

·         Providing a new home for every rough sleeper by 2020 would cost approximately $233.2 million per annum.

·         Doubling funding for Specialist Homelessness Services provided under the National Affordable Housing Agreement would cost $507 million per annum.

·         Signing a new National Partnership on Homelessness to 2020 would cost $160 million per annum and would be matched by the states.

That adds up to 900.2 million per year. Which would still leave 295.8 million per annum that we could put to other great causes. Wouldn’t that be an incredible accomplishment?

Now imagine that we could keep that giving going for 5 years. At $1.196 billion a year, that’s $5.98 billion over the 5 years. It's not a massive amount in the grand scheme of things, considering that (from what I can tell) Australia's Total Taxation Revenue was roughly $400 billion during the 2013-2014 financial year. But there are a few different ways we could make a difference.

We could;

·         Fund a collective social revolution that calls for a change in how we deal with members of society who have been marginalised and forgotten.
·         Further causes that will directly benefit our society, such as sustainable energy – for instance, the Solar Roadways I like so much, or basically anything that cures us of our dependence on rapidly dwindling natural resources.
·         Assist the community in other ways, like funding research that may have been passed over by higher-profile fundraising.

·         We could make a contribution to a global cause, such as ending world hunger or extreme poverty, and extend the hand out towards others in countries that don’t have someone to look out for them.

I could go on forever. There are any number of ways this could be used – by the people for the people. It’s such an amazing concept – if we all shared a little of our wealth, not even enough to ask for a sacrifice, we could make such a difference to our country.

*Disclaimer: This is my opinion, drawn from the information that was easily available to me. As I said before, I make no assurances that what I have said is correct. I encourage you to look into it yourself. And if you find that I'm wrong in any way, I'd love to hear about it. I’m also more than happy to discuss this idea. If you have any questions, issues or ideas, please feel free to comment.