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Blogs by Ann Massey
Australia's new homeless: the working poor 5/25/2013 12:40:35 PM
Today in Western Australia there are people working hard, sometimes at several jobs, often long past retirementage, making little money who can no longer afford even the most basic housing.
People with minimal education and abilities have always been part of the economic landscape filling jobs that require elementary skills. The difference is that previously even on the minimum wage they were able to feed, clothe and put a roof over their heads.
This is no longer true in Western Australia where we now have two separate and distinct societies living side by side. On one hand there is the wealthy; well rewarded professionals - doctors, lawyers, accountants, business operators and mining workers who don't have to worry about the rising cost of living. On the other side of the great economic divide thousands of Western Australians working at minimum wage jobs don't earn enough to pay for basic living expenses - many do not have a place to call home, while others are teetering on the precipice of foreclosure and eviction.
The economic boom in mining and natural resources has come at a great cost to the most vulnerable people in society for whom home ownership and private rental is no longer an option. Bi-products are a feature of the industrial process, often unintended, frequently problematic. In the case of Western Australia, two bi-products: soaring house prices and living expense has left the working poor with no alternative than to live on the streets of Perth.
