Guest Speaker: John Novatscou & Gary Brown-Neaves (No More Homeless Inc)
John was introduced by John Saleeba.
No More Homeless is a full 100% Tax Deductible registered charity. They tie into a lot of other Homeless organisations.
John had an aortic valve operation and having survived wanted to do something for others. He wanted to put Homeless people back into housing. He met Gary Brown-Neaves at the Footy and he also wanted to be involved. Everyone in the organisation has come in serendipitously.
There are four Homeless types;
Type1: Medical / mental and addiction issues
Type2: Youth & family problems
Type 3: In transition - out from prison or the like
Type 4: Good people in a bad place.
The Type 4 people are the ones they are targeting at helping put back into housing. They don’t want the Type 4 spiraling into a Type 1 situation. They can be particularly single women with children living out of a car.
They are trying to build small developments of 6 to 8 units with 2 Beds / 1 Bath for around $105k per unit. Their modeling says it is all doable and scalable. Currently, the Govt is spending approx. $56k per homeless person. This is crazy. Moving forward by putting people in houses they can ameliorate this cost dramatically hence saving the Govt $2 billion in the long-term.
They are just wanting to start their first pilot program and then they are away. The biggest problem is finding land to do it. Unfortunately, they need Local Govt and State Govt help to solve this one. Not easy!
Gary Brown-Neaves spoke; They are trying to achieve a model to enable mortgaging the properties with the Govt owning the asset. The units are very well designed and very liveable with inside and outside areas. Small but perfectly formed. Their tactic is to get the first couple of developments away and thus shame the Govt into action.
Act Pres Craig thanked John & Gary for sharing their project and enlightened us on what can be done. All the best in their endeavours.
