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Donate now: help end the cycle of homelessness
When Justin* came to the Haymarket a couple of months ago, it was the first home he’d had in more than 20 years.
When the pandemic struck – it became a turning point for him – and for the Haymarket.
Taking a hotel room to help enforce social distancing caused him anxiety.
Our case managers have worked painstakingly with him and our other residents, who have particularly complex needs and behaviours.
And Justin has adjusted well so far: “It has been good having your freedom and your own room. The food is important because you can’t do your own cooking.”
Like all our residents, Justin has mental health issues, drug and alcohol dependence, trauma and health issues, making him particularly vulnerable to COVID-19.
There are extra responsibilities, stresses and costs for the Haymarket during the pandemic.
We are on-call 24-hours a day and visit the hotel daily to deliver food, support and act as a broker with hotel management.
In some cases, we have provided little extras like a doorstop for a client who is so used to sleeping out in the open, that he could not sleep behind a closed door.
The pandemic has required us to be even more adaptable than usual.
The complexity of the work means that it is slow, detailed and expensive: but it works.
Last year, we helped almost one in five people find long-term housing and countless others were helped to access NDIS funding and other key ingredients to an independent life.
We don’t just want to provide a meal and a blanket: we want to solve homelessness.
It is a big goal: but we know we can achieve it, one person at a time.
That detailed approach has become more expensive during the pandemic, with additional costs for visits, buying necessities for residents and ensuring everyone has the basic health protection they need.
That funding gap means we are asking our supporters for help.
Can you help people like Justin, get the support he needs with a donation to our winter appeal, until he finds a home of his own?
At the Haymarket, we’ll never close our doors to clients like Justin – no matter how hard the road ahead might be.
Can you make a tax-deductible donation from as little as the price of a meal, right through to a personally meaningful contribution, which could be transformational for people like Justin?
-With sincere thanks from the Haymarket Foundation team.