IT has taken seven years and more than $7 million dollars but the St Vincent de Paul Society’s Families Back on Track (FBOT) project on the Gold Coast has welcomed its first families.
The project at Arundel on the Gold Coast comprises 27 independent furnished units that will provide short to medium-term accommodation to homeless single-parent families.
FBOT will also provide the “hand up” not just the “hand out” that the St Vincent de Paul Society is dedicated to providing people in need.
The society’s Gold Coast and Country central council president Jim Donaldson said the original idea proposed by two Mudgeeraba Vincentians was to provide vital accommodation for homeless single fathers and their children.
Mr Donaldson said that at that time although crisis accommodation existed for single mothers and single men nothing existed for single fathers.
He said funding from the Queensland State Government for additional units saw the project expanded to included sole mothers.
“Ironically the very first residents we got were a father and two children,” he said.
Mr Donaldson said FBOT included four staff who would assist families to “get their lives back on track” including a live-in caretaker, a facilities manager and two family support workers.
“We (offer) medium to long-term transitional housing, so with FBOT we actually have a program going through to assist (people) with all sorts of things to get them on their feet,” he said.
“We will have cooking classes here, financial help, people coming in to help the children with their homework. We’re transitional so we’ll take them through into long-term permanent housing whether it will be private rental accommodation or social housing.”
FBOT facilities manager Julie Grant said the Arundel site included two ground-floor disability units, a community service delivery centre where the society’s intensive support programs would be provided, and activity and recreation precincts.
She said project staff were interviewing possible tenants who were referred from the Department of Communities’ Gold Coast housing and homeless register.
“We don’t maintain our own ‘wait’ register. We advise the area office at Robina that we have vacancies and they send referrals to us,” she said.
Ms Grant said residents would stay for periods up to a maximum of 12 months, pay a rent of 28 per cent of their income and be committed to working towards an “exit strategy”.
“Some will stay for three months, some six, nine or twelve months,” she said.
“I will work through an exit planning process with them and empower them to actually source an exit tenancy before they leave here so we are never going to put anyone from here into homelessness.”
