Meanwhile,a small group – between 20 and 30 – ofBrisbane’s 9700 homeless live under the Go Between Bridge on Brisbane’s Kurilpa Peninsula.
At South Brisbane,they wake every morning to joggers and cyclists,casually waving to council workers and police doing welfare checks using the bridge overhead to protect them from the rain.
Lord mayor Adrian Schrinner wants to dust off previous mayor Graham Quirk’s 2014 Kurilpa Master Plan,increasing living density,allowing an extra 10 storeys for apartments and an extra 10,000 people. That is not their Brisbane.
It is part of Brisbane City Council’s generalSustainable Growth Strategy,released on Thursday. It is badged “Our City’s Housing and Homelessness Strategy”.
“It will just become one more place where we aren’t safe to stay any more,” one homeless man says,while others nod. “They’re just going to muscle us out,basically.”
“I’ve given up crime. I don’t do crime anymore. We are homeless,not dangerous. We just struggle to find somewhere to live,” they collectively say.