The man without a home

Matte Dunn is not drug addicted, not an alcoholic, not a gambler and has no diagnosed mental illness, but he is homeless. This is 12 hours in his life.

By Jane Cowan

According to City of Melbourne figures, numbers of people sleeping rough in Melbourne have gone up 74 per cent in the past two years.

Anecdotal evidence from the sector suggests the homeless demographic is changing: increasingly drugs and mental illness are not the sole drivers. Instead, the sheer unaffordability of housing is pushing people onto the street.

Homeless most of his life, Matte Dunn has been offered crisis and transitional housing multiple times, but has always turned it down. He feels he’s safer on his own than sharing with others who he fears may be using drugs or are potentially violent.

Matte can only laugh when he hears the public debate around housing affordability.

He used to think it was possible for him to own his own home one day, but that dream has faded.

These days his hopes for the future are simple.

“I just would like to be happy. I think I would just like to be in my own space. And to not worry about being in other people’s space anymore.”

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Matte is a well-known figure at Melbourne Central. Picture: Jane Cowan

Matte is finishing up his work as InfoGuy, a job he created for himself about eight years ago when he started with a milk crate at Flinders Street station, giving directions to late night revellers looking to catch the last train home.

Now, he says, on a good week he can make $200-$300 from tips from shoppers at Melbourne Central, where management lets him set up his booth.

In 2008, then prime minister Kevin Rudd’s 2020 Summit made Matte think about where his life was going.

He devised an eight-year plan to get out of homelessness and InfoGuy was a big part of it.

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A lone pair of seagulls and a glimpse of the city skyline above Matte’s InfoGuy booth. Picture: Jane Cowan

Matte doesn’t necessarily consider himself poverty-stricken.

What he lacks more than anything else, he says, is relationships — “being able to talk to someone who doesn’t get paid for talking to you”.

He says one thing people don’t understand about homelessness is the intense loneliness.

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