“I Sold My House To Help The Homeless”
Suzanne Hopman is founder of the charity, Dignity.
I don’t have any formal qualifications in this. I have been working with people experiencing homelessness for more than 10 years, but I did a lot of other things first. I started in hotel management and worked in London, the Middle East and Sri Lanka, then I had various community development roles. But helping people experiencing homelessness is my passion.
I built up a lot of knowledge and experience working with great people in large organisations, but the way the systems worked meant things fell through the gaps. I remember one evening helping a mum and three little ones into some temporary housing, but there was no food in the house. I thought, “What are they going to eat?”, and went and bought them a roast chicken and some salad. She cried when I brought the food in.
I dreamt of doing things differently with a smaller, more flexible organisation so I went looking for someone doing things the way I imagined it. Then I realised no one else was going to do it, so it had to be me. I launched this charity, Dignity, in 2015 and we have just had our fifth anniversary.
I sold my house to get Dignity started. It’s very hard to get funding to establish something big and ambitious. I made the decision thinking that I would be able to buy another house further down the track – and in fact, once the charity was in a position to refund that loan, I did buy a place for myself. Now Dignity has steady support through the NSW Department of Communities and Justice as well as grants and corporate and individual donations.
I never thought we would grow so big so quickly. We have gone from one property in the Southern Highlands, with six rooms catering for women and children, to 22 locations sleeping up to 260 people a night: men, women and children. We have a fantastic team of 33 and more than 200 volunteers, and my role has had to grow and change with the organisation. In the early days I didn’t draw any income and I did everything: I was the support worker and the cleaner and the bookkeeper.
Dignity is our core value. It filters through everything we do. Sometimes people experiencing homelessness are put into really cheap motels where they feel unsafe. They’re traumatised and left there feeling desperate with no food, no internet and no idea what comes next.
When people arrive at our properties, they discover a beautiful place that is safe and clean and welcoming, with lovely fresh sheets and towels and toiletries, and beautiful home-cooked meals. We sit down and have a cup of tea and that’s often when the tears start flowing. They have something to eat, a hot shower and a good sleep – sometimes for the first time in a long time.
We ask them how we can help. If they need to find a rental property, we can assist with that. If there are drug or alcohol issues, we can refer them to a specialist agency. We know how to find the information they need. If they are not literate, we can help with filling in forms. In one case, we had an older person whose glasses had been smashed; we helped him get a new pair. Something that simple can have a huge impact.
We offer different types of accommodation. We have supported temporary accommodation for up to 28 days. By far the biggest cause of homelessness is family or relationship breakdown. In such cases, often they just need a few days to get themselves together before they can sort out their next move.
We have a new model of intergenerational accommodation where people can stay up to 12 months if they need extra living skills. It helps to build community. We have one man who started working at a property as a farmhand at 16 and was let go at 67. He had never lived anywhere else and didn’t know what to do. He lived in his car for six months, too proud to reach out for help until he had gone through all his savings. Working on the land, he had never used a computer or the internet, so he had no idea how to access Centrelink. He now grows vegetables with the younger residents, and they help him with technology. They are developing confidence, supporting each other on their journeys.
Our volunteers make 1500 meals a week. We get over a tonne of raw ingredients delivered by OzHarvest and Second Bite, and the volunteers pick and pack the ingredients they want – just like on MasterChef. They come from a wide range of backgrounds, so we tell them to cook what they would feed their family. They return meals packaged up in individual portions.
Every dollar we save is another dollar we can spend on someone experiencing homelessness, so keeping our overheads low is important. We don’t even have a head office, because I didn’t want to spend thousands of dollars on rent. I was really proud when we were named Business of the Year at the Telstra Business Awards last year – the first time a charity won – because it demonstrated how efficient and professional our organisation is as a business.
There is not a lot of data available on homelessness, so we developed our own software system that enables us to track trends and our social impact. We often see trends really early; having the data means we can start looking at why this is happening and what we can do to prevent it from occurring more. We noticed the increase in older women experiencing homelessness a few years ago, well before the media started reporting on it.
We are always looking at new programs we can implement. We have been helping people who have lost their jobs due to COVID and can’t access JobSeeker, and we are bracing for a huge wave of homelessness when the government subsidies and support is scaled back. There is always more to do but if I need to recharge, I spend a few days in the field. There is nothing more rewarding than having a cup of tea with someone setting out on a new path.
Interview with Suzanne Hopman by Ute Junker
Photo_ Nathan Lemon/UnSplash