A woman wearing a face mask walks past a homeless person outside an upmarket department store on Elizabeth Street in the fashionable end of Sydney’s CBD.
During the initial COVID-19 lockdown of Sydney in March, many homeless people were given temporary accomodation in low budget hotels around the city. Since then, however, more and more homeless have been seen back out on the streets, especially in the last few weeks. With fears that a second wave of the pandemic is just around the corner, a continuing economic downturn may see even more people struggling to keep a roof over their heads.
Forecasts for unemployment, for instance, have now been revised up to 11% by Christmas, with an effective rate of 13% and may blow out even further in case of a second wave in NSW. Meanwhile the ‘mutual obligation’ requirements have been reimposed by Centrelink to everyone on Jobseeker payments, and the Jobseeker supplement reduced to $250 a fortnight by September. With small businesses being driven to the wall by the pandemic and the number of positions vacant slashed, these moves have been seen as punitive, ‘offensive’ and ‘dumb’. The Unemployed Workers Union is encouraging those on the dole to ‘strike’.
Part of an ongoing series ‘COVID-19 Diaries’.
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