A good old friend Jeff Gambin used to tell about the homeless man who offered Jeff his blanket thinking Jeff to be homeless. The simple gesture, common among rough sleepers, caused Jeff to found the most effective Homeless peoples service ever to operate in Sydney. Sadly Just Enough Faith no longer exists but thats another story.

As our  small team of  Sydney Homeless ( we”re homeless too ) do our rounds of our City we look in dismay as some of our homeless brothers and sisters sleep on footpaths & in doorways or where-ever they may be as tiredness overtakes them. A high proportion of them I cannot communicate with – or communication is so disjointed. I do Not know how to help if I cant communicate- & those who specialize in such support are often asleep or indifferent- I do know that if Im freezing in multiple layers of clothes & jackets,they are probably freezing too- at least I can give them a blanket.
 
HOW YOU CAN HELP

COLLECT CLEAN BLANKETS : we will arrange bulk collection Australia wide.

Form a blankets4homeless chapter in your Town or City worldwide. Our Skype network can support all partners worldwide managing inbound cakls for assistance or reports of rough sleepers fron the public. We urge partners to work with orgs but not be used by NFPs to do what they collect gov & dinor $$ for without charge.

contact us @SydneyHomeless

skype: blankets4homeless avail soon
email: sydneyhoneless@letterboxes.org

HOW IT WORKS:
People seeing rough sleepers in public places call our Sjype based call center, giving location

Our blankets4homekess person takes the rough sleeper a blanket. At least they”re a bit warner.If possible our person will assist further.

blankets4homeless people willl accept goodwill donations which they may keep or put into the service ar their discretion

r blankets4honeless is simple & needs little to set up. We are homeless remember? Our version is simply a guy walkung the streets with a remivalusts trolley.Liaded with clean 2nd hand blankets. Backed up by an anon storage donir. And blanket donors. Its that simple

supporting #occupy movement via @occupySYDNEY Twitter.com/occupysydney

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Well, being the sucker that I am, I went & helped her rebuild for six weeks,I thought. Well, six months in fact. No she absolutely couldn’t afford to pay me.Yes she offered to. But thats why I’ve been away for six months…

Our advice to the people of NSW is to choose extremely carefully as #NSWvotes – and pick the best available candidate

   Without checking the minimum wage for Adults is $15-70 per hour – but many toil daily in roles such as  cleaning or restaurant work for far less. To be precise, the minimum wage I’m aware of is a paltry $6 per hour -paid by a particular eatery to all kitchen hands and wait staff -who either “live with parents” or are part of our homeless community. These hapless “employees” work up to 74 hours a week -for a measly $444 per week. Thats cash you understand. $8- $10 per hour is commonplace as are the Employers who never pay. It’ll be in the bank tomorrow/next week etc is heard virtually daily.

   It seems that State and Federal Government departments are either completely ill equipped to deal with these exploitative employers, or turn a blind eye to what has become a commonplace practice. The sole reason that I am not trumpeting the businesses names from the highest roofs is that they provide the sole income some marginalised people have.  

  The victims known to me are almost exclusively Asian- and I won’t go into the ethnicities of the employers/ exploiters. But these asian workers are genuine hard working people -people too proud to accept help unless they can do something in return. And they are industrious. They are just not rewarded adequately.

  Such practices are exploitative of workers, unemployed and taxpayers alike. They do not solve unemployment rather, they at best allow manipulation of statistics by cycling already marginalised people through further degrees of marginalisation in order to gain an advantage for both the exploiter and the Job Network Agency, which receives a hefty “success” fee paid by your tax dollars courtesy of FAHSCIA -or whatever the department is called this week.    

 The practice, believed to be commonplace among minimum wage industries, is onerous for hapless workers who are often left worse off by the altered unsustainable economics. A further stab at their confidence and morale is inevitable when, usually within 2 weeks of expiration of subsidies, they are laid off- often on a pretext contrived by the employer which leaves the hapless worker penalised by Centrelink .