Extract from Eureka Street
- Andrew Hamilton
- 06 August 2020
This year the first day of Homelessness Week has coincided with the beginning of Stage 4 Lockdown in Melbourne, and both with Midwinter. My mood during my first regulation One Hour Exercise walk was understandably tetchy. It was not improved by being pushed off the footpath by two men who were not wearing masks. ‘Idiots’, I muttered to myself glumly, only for my good spirits to return as an angle for a Eureka Street column graced me with its arrival.
To be fair to the men on the street, they could have both had legitimate exemptions for not wearing masks. But as we've seen, particularly from some attention-drawing examples of late, there are some who are choosing not to wear masks or physically distance. The word ‘idiot’ is derived from classical Greek, in which it referred to a private person, unsociable, self-absorbed, with no interest in public life or in the public good. Precisely the condition of people who disregard the regulations aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19. Another contemporary name for this condition is entitlement.
The polar opposite of the idiot is someone who is civic minded, sees themselves as part of a larger whole, is willing to subordinate their own narrow interests to the good of the community and especially its most vulnerable members. This is precisely the public attitude necessary for suppressing the coronavirus and for recovering from its effects on economic and social life. Another name for it is responsibility.
If they are to enlist the support of their people in acting responsibly in the face of coronavirus, governments must themselves practice responsibility and abjure idiocy. They must look to the good of the whole community, and especially to disadvantaged people who are at the greatest risk of contracting the coronavirus.
Among them are people who are homeless. Some have been living and sleeping on the streets of Australian cities. To live without a home, a postcode, an address makes difficult so many things we take for granted: cooking meals, washing clothes, hygiene, dealing with government agencies, and having access to employment or education. It is naturally isolating, carries a stigma, and threatens physical and mental health. It is not a condition that any decent society should allow its citizens to endure at any time, much less during a pandemic.
In the initial response to the virus governments displayed admirably their responsibility to people who were homeless, finding them accommodation in hotels. This was part of a more general support for people whom the virus threatened with loss of work and of accommodation. Together with the rise in the JobSeeker scheme it helped homeless people live with some dignity.
'Governments have two choices. They can return to the attitudes that have led to endemic homelessness and a neglected old age for the vulnerable, and to a society and economy vulnerable to pandemics. Or they can ensuring and fund adequate housing and aged care for the vulnerable through enlisting properly regulated community organisations.'
This accommodation, however, is temporary, intended to last only to the beginning of economic recovery. Simultaneously, many of the financial supports and the protection from bankruptcy and eviction that were also introduced in response to the virus are also scheduled to cease. If and when this happens a very large number of the people who have lost employment will be unable to pay rent or mortgages, and so risk homelessness. This will in turn create ideal conditions for the virus to spread.
The contrast between the responsibility evident in the housing and support for people who are homeless in the name of a society united in addressing the threat of the coronavirus, and the lack of responsibility evident in the return to a previous state of affairs, is notable. It suggests that the habitual government attitudes to housing, employment and welfare are characterised not by responsibility for the common good but by idiocy: the focus on individual gain at the expense of the good of the community.
They have withdrawn from their responsibility to ensure that all members of society, especially the most vulnerable, are decently housed. They have allowed responsibility for housing, aged care and other social goods to be left to private enterprise, with the result that they have become a source of self-aggrandisement by the already wealthy. Social housing was sold off, allowed to deteriorate and not expanded to meet need. Underlying this neglect is the self-serving belief that society is made up of competitive individuals, and that subsidising the most successful will create a prosperity which will then spread to the whole society. People who could not compete were regarded as undeserving of a share in the fruits of prosperity. The pandemic has shown how reckless this attitude is in destroying the solidarity needed to meet crisis. It is the abstract equivalent of refusing to wear a mask when walking during lockdown.
In this time of coronavirus the fruit of these attitudes can also be seen in the policy governing the housing of aged people. In Victoria nursing homes have been one of the major sources of infection within the community and of deaths from COVID-19. As with homelessness the root of neglect is to be found in turning aged care into a market where the government subsidises private operators at an inadequate level. Good nursing homes, and the best are very good, are expensive, the businesses are profitable, and people with some wealth are cared for safely.
Many other nursing homes are also very profitable, but the profit comes from skimping on food and care, and employing casual and badly trained staff. Because these staff need to eat and feed their families, they often works shifts in different homes, helping to make the homes a dream target for ambitious viruses. Regulators, faced with the alternative of closing down homes with all the distress this causes to vulnerable people while knowing that they are unlikely to find better conditions elsewhere, are typically ineffectual.
Again the root of these conditions lies in the idiocy of governments that neglect the welfare of low paid workers by encouraging casualisation, and refuse to take responsibility for the welfare of vulnerable elderly people. Instead they shift the responsibility on to profit making private enterprise on the pretext that it will yield better results for people in a more efficient manner. Efficiency is produced by underfunding.
In both aged care and in housing for vulnerable people the catastrophic risks inherent in the attitudes that drive policy are now clear. Governments have two choices. They can return to the attitudes that have led to endemic homelessness and a neglected old age for the vulnerable, and to a society and economy vulnerable to pandemics. Or they can ensuring and fund adequate housing and aged care for the vulnerable through enlisting properly regulated community organisations. It is a choice between going masked in communal responsibility and going unmasked out of idiocy.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street. 
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