Specials 2017 - 2018

There’s a crisis in Australia. One in 200 of us are homeless on any given night. Almost one third are families and the numbers are on the rise. Public housing stock is shrinking while rents are skyrocketing. Domestic violence and relationship breakdown sets families adrift in a strange and unfamiliar world of emergency shelters and life on the streets. Those from culturally diverse backgrounds, refugees, asylum seekers and Indigenous people are most at risk. More than half the entire homeless population are migrants or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The spiralling population of new homeless are often workers or single older women. And then there are the 3,000 Aussie veterans who fought for their country and now have no roof over their heads. The myths are exposed, the realities explored – homelessness can happen to anybody. It could be you… But Australians don’t care. Four in ten think the homeless are ‘lazy freeloaders’, ‘stupid failures’ or ‘not working hard enough’. One in five think it’s a choice to be homeless. With the gap between the haves and the have-nots ever widening, and attitudes hardening, we take five wealthy Australians away from their privileged and pampered lives, and for ten days and nights immerse them into the world of homelessness.