The City of Sydney estimates that about 350 people are sleeping rough on the streets of the inner city, a dramatic 24 percent increase over 2024. Some of them probably won’t survive this winter.
At the annual Homeless Persons’ Memorial Service in Martin Place last Saturday evening, Lauren Hardgrove, CEO of Catholic Cemeteries and Crematoria, read out the names of about 20 men and women who had died on the city streets last year.
“Each name we speak represents a life full of hopes, struggles and moments of connection,” she said. “Though their journeys may not have been easy, we honour their humanity, their dignity and the impact they had on those around them.”
These were just the people who could be identified or found, Hardgrove told The Catholic Weekly.
About 250 people attended the hour-long ceremony, which is held annually at 6pm on 21 June, the winter solstice, the longest night of the year.
It is supported by a number of charities, including the PAYCE Foundation, the Archdiocese of Sydney’s Justice and Peace Office, Catholic Cemeteries and Crematoria, the St Vincent de Paul Society, and the End Street Sleeping Collaboration.
Dominic Sullivan, director of the PAYCE Foundation, told the crowd: “We gather in Martin Place, the centre of business and commerce, home to lawyers, merchant bankers and the Reserve Bank of Australia, a place we normally associate with prosperity and privilege. But here in Martin Place, we also witness the other extreme, fellow Sydneysiders who struggle every day to survive without food and without shelter.”
The memorial service is an important moment, said Sue Buckingham, a facilitator at David’s Place, a Catholic charity in Elizabeth Bay for the homeless and marginalised.
“Somebody’s there, and then they disappear. They die and there’s no memorial service. There’s nothing. It’s very difficult for people to know that nothing’s going to happen if they die. It’s very difficult for the friends of people who have died to know there’s no way that they can remember that person or commemorate them.”
Among the speakers were religious leaders Bishop Daniel Meagher, Imam Mahmoud Alazhari, Rabbi Mendel Kastel, and the NSW minister for housing and homelessness, Rose Jackson. Two homeless men, Kelvin Coe and Felix Morgan, also contributed words about their “street brothers.”
“What does it mean to be homeless?” Morgan, who was ill, asked in a speech read by Communities for Communities founder Lance Brooks.
“It means learning to survive in the cracks of the city. It means sleeping under the stars, not because it’s romantic, but because there’s no roof to call your own. It means making friends fast and losing them even faster. Some friends vanish overnight, no goodbye, no warning, just gone.”
Providing uplifting moments on the evening were the Honeybees Choir and Sydney Street Choir, clad in vivid red t-shirts.
Wazza, an exuberant tenor with a Santa Claus beard, said that he had been singing with the Sydney Street Choir for 15 years. At the moment he has a flat in Waterloo, but for a long time he had been living in a car or sleeping rough.
“Never give up, keep persisting,” when The Catholic Weekly asked him for advice about coping with homelessness, “and always turn up at the housing commission doorstep every day until such times as they get sick of you and give you a place.”
Homelessness eludes easy definitions. Street homelessness is the most visible, but the City of Sydney also includes people who live in inadequate housing, or who lack a steady place to live, or live in boarding houses.
Josie Charbel, NSW manager of Vinnies Vans, told The Catholic Weekly that Australia’s housing crisis was hitting people hard.
“I’ve been doing this for 18 years. This is the worst I’ve seen it,” she said.
“Now you’ve got the working poor, and that’s hard. They can’t keep their head above water.”
She finds their situations heart-breaking. One father told her the cheapest way to eat was for him and his wife to eat diet shakes at 83 cents a serving so that his children can get proper meals.
Paradoxically, none of the rough sleepers attended the ceremony. Buckingham explained why – they have to grab a “possie” early before someone else steals it. Six o’clock, an hour after sunset, is too late for them.
Sure enough, afterwards The Catholic Weekly spoke with Danny on George Street near Wynyard station. He was dozing on a pile of blankets and coffee cups and suitcases and shopping bags with his missus, Kylie.
Both looked listless and ill – “not the best” situation, as Danny laconically admitted. Across the street, the footpath was lit by outdoor gas heaters. Noisy crowds were dining in bars and restaurants; partygoers were tripping off to clubs. Danny said that he hadn’t heard of the memorial service only 200 metres away. Nor had the revellers.
