Meeting December 4

Captain Paul Trotter - Salvation Army Officer at Altona was our speaker and discussed the challenges of managing homeless people.
including the lack of housing, the cost of living crisis and the ned to re-create a sense of community.
After his first appointment at Brunswick in Jan 2020 he was soon challenged with COVID lockdown and homeless people being located in hotels. Many had lost the skills to live in a domestic situation and found the experience akin to imprisonment. This policy ignored the other supports required by the homeless.
At his subsequent appointment in Colac he found it a challenge to educate the community that being homeless was often related to factors unrelated to drugs, alcohol and gambling, but can be precipitated by unemployment and family breakdown.
The currently the cost of living making it difficult to make ends meet especially for the elderly.
In his current appointment at Altona this has been evident in the tripling the attendance at community lunches, and doubling the request for food parcels from 15-20/day since Feb 2025.
Paul emphasises to his staff the need to create personal relationships with the needy and not treat them as a number, as occurs at Centrelink and other agencies.
He is concerned how our community has transformed from "selfless" to "selfish" and the need to recreate the sense of community and break the cycle of poverty.

President Elizabeth made a donation to assist Paul with his work and Maria Silber presented a collection of toys for distribution at Christmas.