there's no place like

This is someone's stash or 'home'.  It appeared in this tree some time towards the end of last week.  The tree is in a vacant lot that runs parallel to my office building.  I pass it when walking in or out of work.  (I like the billy can; it's a particularly homey touch.) 

You might remember a couple of months back before Christmas when I posted about seeing a collection of 'homes' like this amongst the shrubs in the nature strip across the road.  (The nature strip is probably at least 10 m wide.)  I was in two minds about publishing this photo, as I felt it might be an invasion of privacy.  However, the stash is in a fairly public place already.

I presume this stash belongs to an out-of-towner, who may be here indefinitely, or on a short visit, for possibly any number of reasons such as to visit relatives, seek medical treatment, attend a sporting match and find other entertainment, or to look for a job.

I'm sure that shelters and stashes like this exist across the world, wherever there is poverty.  I've been into the reasons before in this blog why housing is such a fraught issue in our particular town, and why it's so difficult for itinerants to find even temporary accommodation.  You may have heard that there are plans to salvage dongas from Woomera to address this need -- something I might take up in another post.  One aspect of this issue that interests me is that desert people are highly mobile, and have been so historically, because of the need to search widely for food.  I guess the days of hunter-gathering are probably numbered and I'm not wanting to deny anyone shelter, but I wonder sometimes about the moral value associated with housing, especially as a source of social and economic capital.  Is it so bad to live a highly transcient lifestyle?  What if people are happy enough camping in a makeshift dwelling or a dongas for that matter then moving on?  If they're otherwise healthy, does it matter whether or not they have a house?

Comments

[Mel]

I too like the billy. It indicates self preservation. Sadly thats not what I always see here.

[Janet]

My fear when I see stashes in the park near where I live is that someone will feel the need to move them on, or otherwise encroach on anothers small and fragile home. I've also felt that perhaps we (as a society) need to cultivate a wider sense of home. As not just a house we live in with a fence around it, but maybe of country and community. Not that I'd want to deny anyone access to housing, conventional or otherwise. Far, far from it. (I get to see in my work just how awful and stressful that can be.) Just that cities and towns can be so unfriendly to people passing through.

[Ariel]

I don't think it's morally wrong to not have a house but do think that most people who don't have a place of abode are in that situation out of necessity. If they want to camp out, then let them, I say. But lack of housing and the way that people fall through the cracks of the welfare system is a big problem that needs to be better addressed - mainly by addressing the underlying problems that lead to those situations, as well as addressing the symptom that is homelessness. It's sad to hear that this is on the rise in Alice.

[Danny Yee]

I think health care ranks above housing, at least in places warm enough that being itinerant is a viable way of life.

But a lot of our systems don't cope well with people without an address.

[Mikhela]

The issue of defining transience is interesting- and that we assign a moral value to it. I remember an Aboriginal guest lecturer giving us a talk, something to the effect of 'white people label indigenous people nomadic because our houses don't stay in the one place. But we as people stay in the same place for centuries, while westernised people get up and move to another city/country/state where they have no connections, history or community at all.' He thought true nomadism was not being connected to community or country, rather than the presence or absence of a bricks and mortar house.

[elsewhere]

Thanks for your thoughts, people.

Yes, it's true that people without an address don't fare well in our systems.

Ariel -- I guess I would say that housing and itinerancy are two separate but related issues in Alice. There's a lack of housing because the population is increasing, partly due to increased numbers of itinerants. But itinerants find it more difficult to find housing than any other newcomers to town. There are other reasons for lack of housing, such as the town being landlocked by native title claims (too difficult to go into here) and the prices associated with transporting building materials here. There's also a further layer of issues relating to the fact that many itinerants don't have experience in living in houses so tend not to be favoured as tenants. But it's a lot more complex than that -- I'll save that for another post.