They’re everywhere. In doors, laneways, and little niches. Their pathetic little sites equipped with milk crates, sleeping bags and what passes for a filthy mattress. Welcome to the worlds most live-able city, and its homeless crisis. Sixth year running.

According to the latest statistics there are more than 280 people sleeping rough in the City of Melbourne. I would hasten to suggest it could be much more. They’re the canaries in the cage. Visible reminder that in our increasingly stratified society there’s a very real line between the haves and the have nots. It’s called the footpath.

Robert Doyle,’Not a great incentive for whistleblowers, and those possessed with that capacity for thought so lacking in our management elite, Imagination’.

The explosion of homelessness and the blight it has caused to fine and respected businesses in the city suggests that all is not right. The Lord Mayor Robert Doyle suggests it’s a growing problem, and like refugees, “illegal”. That’s a nice way of categorizing poverty. The state government is aware of it, and discussion and white papers are being furiously sought. Perhaps its live-ability is why footpath living is so popular. The new denizens of the footpath get more than what’s on offer in suburbia. Access to great boutiques, immediate public transport and the bonus of an engaging in a vibrant social life. Perhaps , (inconvenience aside) they’re the beneficiaries of a social connectivity only sociologists could dream of.

Irony. Homeless outside the Seven Eleven

There’s art in homelessness

The reality is much more grim, they’re the disposed, discards, the refuse the detritus forced out by the overriding economic model that rewards developers, property speculators and the commodification of housing. They are OUT! Those who get IN know that in spite of the stench, they’re comfortably getting richer every day. Collateral damage.

Personally, I sense that there’s fear in the explosion of homelessness. As a consequence of the bounty of casualisation, the emerging underclass, some of them quite highly educated, skilled and marketable, are only an invoice away from homelessness. For those in salaried positions, the message is clear, “step outta line and this could be yours”. Not a great incentive for whistleblowers, and those possessed with that capacity for thought so lacking in our management elite, Imagination.

On the opposite scale it has been revealed that senior public servants, those who just do their job, have joined the ranks of the super rich. It’s all about entitlement. If they didn’t have massively increased salaries paid for by the taxpayers, they’d be demeaned, in status and respect. They may not take the risks associated with private enterprise, the responsibility and the stress, but they deserve senior mamagement salaries, because they’re management.

Nice boys from nice families. In training to be homeless.

So don’t expect a big change in the homelessness that’s invading Melbourne in the short term. How could you expect the senior corps of psychiatric, social and planning department chiefs to remotely understand the day to day predicament of the uber poor. And of course you can’t ask the developers to assist as they’re busy “growing wealth for all of us”. And whilst more and more middle aged professionals are squeezed, (perhaps they felt entitled also) those without the rungs on the ladder, the connections, or the clout, they’re just grist to the mill. And those mills are looking pretty satanic from down here.  The twenty first century is beginning to look, taste, feel, like the nineteenth century. It’s axiomatic in the neo liberal model the more some go up then others must go down. And it’s pretty much all down at the moment.

If the latest invoice doesn’t pay, (lower order consultants must wait up to ninety days) I’ll be late on the rent third time, and the landlord might be getting edgy. Still, it’s nice to know if rendered homeless I’ll be making a contribution. After the census debacle at least I know someone will be counting. And that’ll count for something that planners may dream of. A more equitable future. Dream on.