Speech by Councillor Seal Chong Wah, to full Brisbane City Council Council Meeting, Tues 19th Mar 2025
Speaking on Brisbane City Council's shameful response to homelessness.
Lord Mayor, through the chair, YOU DO NOT ADDRESS HOMELESSNESS BY CRIMINALISING ROUGH SLEEPERS!
To be clear, this Lord mayor issued 24 hours to move on rough sleepers in our council parks.
This comes after days of an emergency severe weather event. Where is your compassion!?
WE are in the worst rental housing crisis since the great depression!
WHERE WILL THEY GO!?
I am really struggling here! Does the Lord Mayor, through the chair, understand what is actually happening?
I mean, I have had many residents come up to me over the weekend after this announcement, also struggling to understand.
They are asking the exact same question, because they know the current situation. They are shaking their heads trying to fathom this cruel decision. They ask, WHERE WILL THEY GO!?
Let me spell it out, the Public Housing wait lists in Queensland are 47,000 people long, which is an estimate. Even this figure will be GROSSLY underestimated.
Last year alone, 25,000 homeless people sought support for long term and medium term housing. They were turned away because those services they were seeking support are chronically underfunded.
We know the top two reasons why people fall into homelessness are housing costs, where there are massive rent increases or people fleeing family and domestic violence.
The hard working Micah organisation recently quoted the following, in response to the Lord Mayor, regarding the recent ex-Tropical Cyclone emergency response to the homeless!
“Brisbane City Council Mayor Adrian Schrinner claims people are homeless by choice and refused offers of accommodation.
While 261 people were registered as sleeping rough during the cyclone there were 146 people who weren't eligible for accommodation because they had no form of identification.
There were 115 people who did have identification but only 71 were offered accommodation.”
Criminalising individual rough sleepers is not only cruel, but it won’t actually address this crisis.
No one chooses to sleep rough in a park when they have better options. People fleeing domestic violence or trying to stay sober require permanent housing, and often specialised support. People with complex mental health issues dumped into short term accommodation with no support systems highlights this immoral broken system.
This needs to be on the record, it's completely untrue to say that every rough sleeper has been offered accommodation. We know for a fact, from chatting to services on the ground, that there are hundreds of people just in this part of Brisbane alone that have been denied the housing and support they need because there is simply not enough funding.
WE KNOW THE SOLUTION!! If governments were serious about ending homelessness, they would adopt the Housing First model - which has virtually eradicated chronic homelessness in Finland - where people experiencing homelessness, are offered permanent housing with no strings attached with wrap-around support services they need to stay there long-term.
The Lord Mayor should explain why he thinks our homeless residents, the most vulnerable of our city, should be criminalised rather than given the long term housing and wrap-around services they are currently being denied.
Again, WHERE WILL THEY GO!!?