While Gladys Berejiklian might be feeling more “comfortable” these days, the homeless community of Sydney is not.

Four days after the homeless tent city at Martin Place was dismantled, a number of its members are sleeping rough in Sydney’s CBD once again, according to tent city spokesperson and organiser Lanz Priestley.

Despite many residents accepting offers of accommodation from Family and Community Services, many other people experiencing homelessness who relied on the space for food, community or support have also been left in the lurch.

The 24/7 Street Kitchen and Safe Space (as the tent city was more formally known) existed in its Martin Place location for more than six months, providing a range of services including free food and beds to those in need.

“I went up to Martin Place at five o’clock this morning, and sat and watched,” Priestley told Junkee. “I had people walking past — the homeless community who used to come up there and eat — they came up and it was like ‘oh, it’s not there anymore’”.

“There’s a lot of emotional stuff going on, and we’re trying to manage that as best as we can.”

Priestley said that he and several other former tent city residents have been looking around Sydney trying to account for the other members. He said he was aware of several who were sleeping rough again, or couch-surfing, or staying in people’s backyards.

Last Friday, the occupants of the homeless tent city at Martin Place voluntarily packed up and left, amidst fears that NSW Police would use their newly granted powers to move residents on. These new move-on powers came into effect after the NSW Government rushed through legislation in a suspension of standing orders last week, following tensions between the NSW Government and the City of Sydney over how to address the tent city.

What Should The Government Be Doing?

Minister for Social Housing Pru Goward told Junkee that Family and Community Services (FACS) had “offered permanent housing to 95 homeless people from Martin Place, and 88 people previously sleeping rough in Martin Place have accepted this permanent accommodation.”

Additionally, she said “an after-hours service for rough sleepers in Sydney has been secured with The Wayside Chapel”, which has been “providing support and a sense of community for the homeless since 1964”.

Priestley did not dispute that these services had been offered, but emphasised once again that offers of accommodation alone are an inadequate response to the problem of homelessness.

“Going forward, we don’t fix this by providing affordable housing for these people,” he told Junkee. “We need housing to be affordable before they hit the streets. We need a whole lot of things so that people have sufficient income to support themselves.”

In all the talk around Martin Place and social housing, never forget this one graph. Basically no new housing built since 1995 pic.twitter.com/shZjONvBse

— Naaman Zhou (@naamanzhou) August 10, 2017

He noted that the 24/7 Street Kitchen provided much more than simple accommodation for the people living there at the time.

“It provided community. Genuine, grassroots community,” he said, noting that this stands in contrast to his experience with institutions like the Wayside Chapel.

“In places like the Wayside Chapel, there’s very much a ‘them and us’ culture. Government-driven models — they’re the antithesis of what I’m talking about. They destroy people.” For this reason, he said, many people experiencing homelessness do not want to return to these spaces.

The 24/7 Street Kitchen, by contrast, “made the case with our model that people will use it, and people will come to it.”

What’s Next For The Street Kitchen And Safe Space?

Priestley is adamant that the 24/7 Street Kitchen and Safe Space will return: to his mind, its services fill a gap that isn’t being addressed by government or non-profits’ initiatives. He says its biggest advantage, and the one the government doesn’t seem to get, is that it is run by and for people experiencing homelessness.

“We know where the holes we fell through are — we can patch those holes up ourselves. Most of the people at Martin Place were new people on the streets who did that. Whether it took two weeks, or six weeks, or three months — in all of those cases, they self-propelled themselves out of the situation they were in.”

“The model that we had up there, the street community and the wider community took ownership of it. We built a very basic, skeletal thing up there, and everyone else came along with their ideas and built it further.”

“That, to me, is the most empowering way to climb back up.”

Priestley says the next iteration of the 24/7 Street Kitchen will be indoors, and that he’s currently in talks with a number of different groups potentially in a position to acquire a location. While last week the City of Sydney proposed a joint initiative with the NSW Government to develop such a space, Priestley says this has fallen through due to FACS’ refusal to participate.

60,000 people are waiting for housing in Sydney, people who wind up sleeping rough on our streets are the very tip of an enormous iceberg

— Clover Moore (@CloverMoore) August 11, 2017

Priestley says that while he’s heard from Lord Mayor Clover Moore since the tent city’s closure, the NSW Government hasn’t been in touch. When Junkee contacted Pru Goward to ask whether the government would consider funding a new space for the Street Kitchen’s services, the Minister said FACS had offered accommodation to the tent city’s residents.

“I’m looking at the guidelines that the government put in place,” Priestley said, “but I’m not seeing a solution.”

“What people have to understand is we had to set up there in the first place, because these systems aren’t working.”

“My focus is to get something up that’s sustainable, and that’s run by the local community.”

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Feature image via Sydney’s 24/7 Street Kitchen and Safe Space Community.

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Sam Langford is a Junkee Staff Writer. She tweets @_slangers.