Today’s a great day because, Levi House in Launceston has won a tender to receive a $4m grant from the Commonwealth Government to refurbish a building for housing the homeless (see an excerpt of the announcement below).
As a volunteer at the current Levi House shelter, in fact today I’m feeling pretty tired because I was on roster last night as one of three overnight supervisors for the 15 people who needed a warm bed and nourishment.
I’ve been working with Sharon Smith, Ixa De Haan, Andrew Fair and others to get the project up since my earliest days in parliament. It’s been a long road, requiring vast amounts of perseverance and commitment and I’m really stoked that its finally got there.
I’d also like to thank the two governments involved for today’s announcement. In a way, I think the project proposal just got better and better over time so in a way it’s a blessing in disguise that the Bartlett Labor Government was too sluggish to spend some of the $60m housing funding they’ve been sitting on all this time.
I want to share one important lesson I’ve learned over the last year: I’ve been a politician and currently I’m not. Despite my best intentions, it couldn’t be more different being a politican writing letters, supporting someone else’s good idea and actually pitching in as a worker, sleeping in simple conditions and spending hours during a freezing winter night talking to people who are experiencing hard times. Sometimes people are homeless because of their own foolish decisions and often good, decent people just like your next door neighbor suddenly find themselves victim to bad luck, illness or abuse.
Whatever the reason, the important thing is that our community doesn’t ignore these people – but exercises wholesome values of respect, dignity, support and encouraging responsibility for future decisions to help them get back to their true potential.
Except from Government media release:
The Door of Hope project will receive more than $4 million in Rudd Government funding and will see a 20 unit facility constructed in an existing building owned by the Door of Hope Christian Church.
The NBESP funding for the capital works of the project will be complemented by recurrent funding under the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness.
Under the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness, the Tasmanian Government has submitted an Implementation Plan that outlines how $18.9 million over four years will be spent.
Under this agreement Housing Tasmania will lease the Door of Hope homelessness facility and will advertise in the future for tenancy management and support services from the not-for-profit sector through a tender process.
In a lovely and positive turn of events, one of the top ten sites on the world wide web today features the article on Harry Murray VC as its main feature, drawing the attention of millions to a hero and the island state of his birth. 
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