Australian diggers at risk of homelessness, expert warns; some veterans and families 'sleeping in cars'

Updated

A veteran of the war in Afghanistan has warned that returning Australian diggers are suffering from epidemic rates of homelessness, with some being forced to sleep in cars.

For the past five months, Geoff Evans has been working as RSL LifeCare's younger veterans adviser providing accommodation and services to returning servicemen and women.

During that time he has placed 21 returned soldiers at an accommodation site at Narrabeen on Sydney's Northern Beaches, but he has warned the need is much greater.

"I think the scale of the problem out there is really quite drastic" Mr Evans told ABC's AM program.

"In 2008, when the last report into veterans who were potentially homeless was published, there was over 3,000 veterans living on the street on any given night," he said.

"So since then if you look at the tempo of operations of the ADF you could reasonably expect that to be much higher. We've put 40,000 or 50,000 troops through Iraq, Afghanistan and other conflict zones."

At the Narrabeen site, single retirement units have been converted to accommodate former defence personnel and their families. Participants in the program are aged between 25 and 55.

"I really think I'm sitting on the tip of the iceberg," Mr Evans said.

"We're not just talking about veterans, we're talking about families of veterans, so we've got women and children sleeping in cars."

Mr Evans predicts demand for his service will only increase with the continuing drawdown of troops from Afghanistan.

"There's a lot of parallels we can draw here with the Vietnam generation because everyone in Australia knows what happened to Vietnam veterans," he said.

"If you look at mental health, suicide and alcoholism - including in their families - well we're seeing that play out again in my generation."

Mr Evans served as a commando for nearly 20 years before being wounded in action in December 2010 and discharged. He has firsthand experience of mental illness and the challenges confronting returning defence personnel.

Calls for early intervention

He said the Department of Veterans' Affairs offered a world class repatriation service but when it comes to addressing homelessness, it lets soldiers down.

"We were already doing the housing first," Mr Evans said.

"It was just a matter of expanding the program to start trying to bring in a more comprehensive rehabilitation focus.

"If you fall over completely the system will put you back together again. But we wait until that person falls over completely and then it's a long build for them again if they're ever going to get back on their feet.

"We need to be intervening earlier and we need to have a particular focus on homelessness."

For the time being, the program is wholly funded by RSL LifeCare, but Mr Evans wants to secure private donations and government funding in order to roll out the service across the country.

"There's a group of veterans staying with me at the moment who are all young men," he said.

"And one of the unique things about them was that they became homeless because they realised they had a chronic mental health issue and/or drug and alcohol issues.

"They couldn't live with their partners but they still love them and they have children.

"We as a nation have just got to do better for them."

Topics: defence-forces, homelessness, australia

First posted