The artist formerly known as David Bowie (and Angry Andersen, and Noddi Haldol ...) in the lobby of the Gatwick. Credit:Thom Rigney "Can I get a room?" I meekly ask the small, Italian-looking woman behind a reception desk surrounded by a leadlight glass screen. "Of course you can, darling. We take anybody here," she says, explaining she only has one double room available at $300 a week, but she'll happily give it to me for $200. On my way out of the office, I notice a crucifix and a sign that says, Live your life with passion. We go upstairs. It was here in 2011 that 50-year-old Neville Morrison attacked 66-year-old David Rodakis, wrongly believing him to be a paedophile. Morrison stomped on Rodakis's head and body 13 times. Rodakis was reduced to a vegetative state and died 13 days later. Just a few months later, 31-year-old Craig Douglas – a man who'd be shot dead by police three hours later – forced his way into a room occupied by two female residents and began stabbing one of them. My room is on the third floor, where most of the long-term residents live; some of them have been here for 40 years. The receptionist points to some fresh graffiti on the wall: "Gee, I hate it when they do that." She takes me into my room, which is big and clean. There are fresh sheets on the bed and the window is open, so it smells a bit better in here. It has a big mirror, a double bed, a foam couch, a fridge, a TV and a large, store-bought framed photo of a soaking, cranky-looking cat titled "Bert's Bath". It looks out onto a street with new, middle-class apartments on the other side. I take my first trip to the bathroom down the hall, where a sign says No defecating (pooing) in the shower. If you do you will be asked to leave.

The Gatwick is a former 1930s mansion now offering shelter to the down-and-out. Credit:Thom Rigney On the way out, a big, burly guy dressed in a tracksuit sees me and guesses correctly that I'm from Queensland. I explain to him that I'm a journalist. He says his name is Wally and he puts his arm on my back and says, "You poor bastard, living here at the Gatwick. I'll help you, brother. I'll help you write a story. You and me, we'll write this story together. You'll be out of here in no time." Wally comes into my room and sits by the desk at the window. I get out my pen and paper and, without flinching, he begins his story. "In 1970, a child was born in Barmah Forest Aboriginal Mission. He had an extremely violent father and the father was extremely abusive towards him and his mother. One day, when the child was 12, the father shot the boy's mother in front of him and then shot himself." Co-owner Rose Banks (at left), who's lived at the hotel since 1977, with a guest. Credit:Thom Rigney "And then what happened?" I ask.

"Then the boy absconded to Melbourne and started training as a boxer. He fought in 22 amateur and professional fights and won 18 of them, including three by knockout punch." A typical bathroom at the Gatwick. Credit:Thom Rigney I wonder what the young couples living in those swish apartments think when they look over into the Gatwick. Are the scenes in here a perpetual reminder that there are worse things in life than a bad day at the office and the unwelcome din of an alarm clock in the morning? "What was your greatest weapon when you were fighting?" "Left hook," he says. "I was a smart boxer, but then I got injured and fell into crime. I've been in jail many times. I'm a convicted drug trafficker and armed robber. I used a gun when I robbed, by the way, not a syringe; people who use syringes when they do it are rude scum in my opinion." Before he leaves, he points to the nice new apartments across the road. "If some things had been a bit different, I'd be living in one of those. I'd have money, a job, a beautiful wife." Then I bump into someone I know, a friend of my ex-boyfriend. Fifty-two-year-old Helen was a commercial litigation lawyer and businesswoman for many years. But 20 years ago, something happened, something of which she has no clear memory. She says her friends told her she was having "some kind of breakdown" and she ended up in a psychiatric ward for a while.

Co-owners Yvette Kelly and Rose Banks stand in front of three of the Gatwick's guests. Credit:Thom Rigney I ask her how long she's been here. "Too long," she says in her fast, manic fashion, with her '60s-style eye make-up and elegant, shoulder-length hair. She explains that she clears about $660 a fortnight from Newstart and has to pay $400 of that in rent. "I just can't save up," she says. "But I know one thing. I definitely don't want to go back to the material, yuppie life that I had and supposedly everybody wants. It's not for me." Shortly after my chat with Helen, I step outside and meet an Indigenous woman named Tania. She immediately refers to me as "brother" and I ask her if she can help me find some pot. She takes me to a community housing complex known as The Regal, which feels like a hospital inside. "You should try to get a room here, bub," she says. "It's for men only here, much nicer than the Gatwick. I feel bad that someone as soft as you is living there." On the way back, I give her some of the pot in payment and she explains that she's on a social housing waiting list and that, along with a few other relatives, she sleeps at a makeshift campsite on St Kilda beach. Back at the Gatwick, I call it a night. On my way to bed, I use the toilet. I notice a baby huntsman spider and then a used syringe sitting on the windowsill. When I look closer, I see that there's a pigeon fast asleep on the other side of the window. The first week has passed. I conclude that one of the biggest issues the residents face is boredom. They don't have jobs, they don't play any sport and, in the end, for most of them, there really isn't much to do but find drugs and get smashed. Most of the Gatwick crew live in a Sisyphean cycle of highs and lows, Centrelink pay days and dry days, with nothing much of what many of us would consider to be a meaningful life in-between.

Sitting here stoned, amid all the drug-induced psychoses, daydreams and nightmares, it occurs to me that, at any one moment in this place, 101 fantasies are taking flight. Gatwick life, it seems, is one that's lived mostly through the imagination. There are good vibes when the food van arrives each night delivering sausage rolls, soups and salad, and I'm reminded just how much this population is at the mercy of other people's compassion. Many Gatwick residents simply wouldn't eat if it weren't for the local charities who lay on breakfast, lunch and dinner. Week two and Tania is sitting on the street with a much older lady. She calls me over and introduces me to her mum. Tania then goes off with Wally and I sit with her mum on the side of the street as she sips wine on what is a very pleasant, sunny afternoon. Tania comes back junked-out from heroin and her mum tells her off. "What about you and your alcohol, Mum?" Tania says. "You can't bloody talk. You get drunk every night." I wonder what the young couples living in those swish apartments think when they look over into the Gatwick. Are the scenes in here a perpetual reminder that there are worse things in life than a bad day at the office and the unwelcome din of an alarm clock in the morning? The Australian underclass is a group that both terrifies us and reassures us that we've made the right decisions. Day 15 and I walk into the bathroom drunk after a night in a local bar. There is a middle-aged Indigenous woman standing in front of the mirror with a syringe. She floats it around the left side of her neck with a look of anguished concentration, before spotting me. She says, "There's some bloody amazing crystal going around at the moment. I can get you some if you're interested." A moment later, she finds the vein she was looking for and calmly injects. "Why are you doing it in your neck?" I ask.

"Straight to the brain, brother," she says, then finishes the shot and starts huffing and puffing and walking around the bathroom in circles. "F..., that's good shit," she confirms, before introducing me to another woman. "This is Anna." Anna is her daughter, who then goes to the mirror with another syringe and repeats the ritual. "Are you sure you don't want some, love?" she asks with a look of "I know you're tempted." I change my mind and she takes me to a room where someone hands me a point [0.1 grams] of meth for $100, with a syringe still in its packet, and I go back into the bathroom and inject the old-fashioned way – on the opposite side of my elbow. I am hit by that rush of excitement: I feel like I belong here and suddenly I can talk to anyone. A short time later, Anna, her mum and I are all sitting outside the 7-11 opposite the Gatwick with three homeless guys amid their blankets. Mother and daughter grab my notebook and swiftly start to fill it up with pictures of snakes drawn in traditional Aboriginal style. One of the men, about 50, is wearing knee-high leather boots. He's playing an unfamiliar tune on a harmonica and stops every now and then to ask passers-by, "Any cash? Any coin? Anything at all?" I ask him how he came to be living on the street. He tells me it wasn't always this way – that he was once a musician and used to perform under many different names. He asks for my notebook so he can write them down. Former Names. Stephen Wolf. Noddi Haldol. Carl Roberts. Lemi Lebo. Lodi Loyd. Lemi Lobi. Lebo Lloyd. Angry Andersen. David Bowie. Busta Brown. I suggest he write a song, and he begins scribbling furiously. When he finishes, he sings the song in a rather beautiful voice under the fluorescent white, green, red and orange lights of the 7-11. I'm not sure if it's his song or just a song I haven't heard before, but it is a remarkable song, a truly remarkable song – sung magnificently, and the dozen or so street people look on in awe. Then he turns to me and says, "See how quickly I wrote that? That's how quickly I wrote Eye of the Tiger." The moment is so uplifting, so revelatory, so delightfully weird and unexpected, I celebrate by buying more meth. Then, like a starved cat woken from a coma, my old meth addiction fully comes back to life, meowing for a bit more and a bit more until you feel like you have no choice but to keep feeding it.

Within hours, my bank account is completely empty. I forget that I'm broke and order more meth from some extremely dodgy-looking men. I go to the bank, a middle-man – let's call him The Bald Man – watching as my account comes up empty. He goes ballistic because he's already made the order and starts yelling at me, ripping the five decorative chains from my neck and telling me I can expect to be visited by him later and have my jaw broken. Pumped up from all that meth, I tell him that I look forward to it, because ever since I laid eyes on him, I've wanted to rip his balls off and shove them up his arse. He leaves, yelling that I'll be suffering soon. I retreat to my room in a spin. I see maggots crawling all over the floor and a series of detailed plots starts to form in my head. As the morning progresses, I conclude that somebody broke into my room while I was out and stole my laptop to give to a journalist who's hijacked my internet history – my internet porn history, to be precise – and broadcast it on the news. I decide I need help and make my way to the Alfred Hospital, where I explain to a nurse that I feel like killing myself now that my internet history has been on the news. "There's nothing about you on the news," she says gently. "I'll go speak to the doctor." Soon after, she returns with a yellow pill and says, "Here, put this under your tongue and wait for it to dissolve. I promise you'll feel better soon." I do as the lovely nurse says and I tell her how important nurses are in this world and if only there was a way of paying them more and, about 20 minutes later, I tell another nurse that I know now that I wasn't on the news and that I'm sorry for getting psychotic, and thank you for looking after me. I explain that I'm living at the Gatwick as a journalist, but things just went a bit wrong. They give me another four pills, plus some Valium, plus a referral letter. Another nurse says to me, "The Gatwick can be dangerous. It'd be best if you try to stay clean – at least while you're there." But I no longer feel safe at The Gatwick. I now have $120 in my bank account, payment for a previous job and enough for a motel room. I pack my bags and on my way out, bump into Tania and Anna from the other night. "Are you leaving, bubs?" Tania asks. "C'mon, stay, you're a really decent person."

"Come and sit with us," Anna says. "Please. You're part of the family now. Drink some wine. It'll level you out." I refuse and spend the night in a motel. The next day, I'm at a homeless crisis centre because I'm broke; somehow living the boarding-houser's dilemma. After a few hours, a social worker invites me into her office. She tells me that there are no crisis beds available in any of the homeless shelters and that it's been that way for a few weeks. "There's the Gatwick, but we don't usually refer people there," she says. "The place is too rough, too violent. But I could make a few inquiries?" She rings Rose Banks, the Gatwick's co-owner, and the crisis centre pays for a week's accommodation – enough to hold me over until next pay day. I get back to the Gatwick. Tania and Anna come up and give me a hug. I see The Bald Man who, along with his friends, apologises – yes, apologises – for the other night. "I like you," he says. "I think you are a good guy." It's actually a relief to be back here. it feels familiar and it seems this is one of the few places where I don't have to feel embarrassed about being a drug addict or going psychotic. The grottiness doesn't feel off-putting now: it's actually kind of homely. The same with the residents. I can look past the missing teeth, the body odour, the strangeness, and see straight into their hearts. Unlike me on a good week, they have no choice where they live. And at the heart of their predicament are not necessarily drugs, alcohol, mental illness or trauma, but the same problem that besets a great number of people: affordable housing. Today, Australia has the third-highest housing-price-to-income ratio in the world. In inner-city Melbourne, the average rent per dwelling has risen from $240 a week in 2000 to $360 a week today – much more than the amount a person receives on Newstart each week. There are 34,000 people on Victoria's public housing list, the state with the lowest per capita social housing in the nation; many more don't bother signing up when they find out about the seven-year waiting list.

Halfway through week three, I finally get the opportunity to interview Rose Banks, who co-owns the house with her sister Yvette Kelly. She explains that when their mum, Vittoria Carbone, first came to Australia from Malta in the 1950s, she had nowhere to go. After quickly learning a little English, she got a job washing dishes in Fitzroy Street Cafe – now long gone – and found a room in a boarding house across the road. She later married Rene, who also got a job at the cafe. The pair worked hard to buy their own cafe and a house just behind Fitzroy Street, where they raised a large family. Never forgetting their precarious beginnings in Australia, though, Vittoria and Rene purchased the Gatwick in 1977 with a view to providing low-budget accommodation for people who were just down on their luck. When their mum died in 1998, Rose and Yvette took over the running of the place. It's the last week and i'm managing to stay clean. I didn't want drugs to stop me seeing the beauty, danger and vulnerability of the people around me. I meet an alternative-looking guy in his early 40s called Jay who tells me he's lived here for eight years. The place is "nowhere near as bad as what people make it", he says. "There are two or three troublemakers out of 40 or 50 people. Often those people are blow-ins. If people are violent, they have to leave; the front door is locked, there are cameras. It's a lot safer now." The days roll on, free of violence and theft, and I come to make what I genuinely consider to be friendships. For the most part, the people I've met here just look terrifying: in reality, they're barely capable of defending themselves.

I see Helen again; she has been letting an Indigenous person stay in her room and invites me in for a cup of tea. "I have put half-full cups and glasses all over my room," the former litigation lawyer says, "to remind me that I still have lots of wonderful things in my life." Later, on my last day, I bump into Tania. "Oh, I forgot to tell you, Luke, I might be seeing my daughter," she says and her face starts to glow. Apparently, the 16-year-old is currently living in southern NSW with her dad, but wants to visit. "A few years back, I got really badly f...ed on the ice and that, and the department came and took her away. But I've cleaned up my act a bit now." Wally, I've found out, used to be one of the most fearsome characters in St Kilda back in the day, but age and emphysema have mellowed him. Leaving the Gatwick for the last time, I see him falling on the pavement, off his head on heroin, with another old-timer. His eyes roll back, he's chewing his own mouth and his friend is trying vainly to get him back on his feet. Wally is singing That's What Friends Are For and it's echoing all over the street. Luke Williams hasn't fed his cat in over six months. He can't hear its meows over the Buddhist chanting he is practising every day in his new home in Kathmandu.