On a dreary, gray Friday morning, most people are hurrying along the city sidewalks and may not even notice, except to circle around, a man lying motionless on the cold, wet sidewalk.
The man lay outside Sydney’s Wynyard station on York Street. But nearby, people were waking up in luxury hotel rooms to hot showers.
For Robert, a homeless man living on the streets, life involves jumping from Pyrmont’s shoreline into the freezing Sydney Harbour for the occasional dip.
Seeing people living on the streets has become a normal part of the urban landscapes of a country that once prided itself on being egalitarian and avoiding the closely coexisting extremes of wealth and poverty seen in less “fortunate” places.
But now travellers leaving Wynyard station can see a glass wall filled with equipment stored by homeless people, like an open-air locker.
Daily Mail Australia approached Robert at the spot where the man was sitting on a stone bench with his head covered in a hood as people walked past him, seemingly oblivious to what was happening.
Robert, who had all his life’s possessions beside him in a shopping trolley, revealed that his sleeping bag had recently been stolen.
“Everywhere I go, they take everything I have and I have no money,” he said. “I have to wait a whole week or a couple of months until I get some money (to buy a new one).”
A man stands on the street near Wynyard Station in central Sydney on a rainy Friday morning.
Later that day, Robert was found at the scene where the man was asleep on a bench with his belongings in a shopping cart.
“That’s bullshit.”
While Robert receives a payment from Centrelink, which he thought was a disability pension, but it “runs out” within a fortnight.
“I give my money to the first person who asks me for it,” he said.
However, it does allow him to spend the occasional night at home.
“Sometimes I stay in a motel, it costs about $80 or $90 and then I don’t have any money for a week,” he said.
Robert said he eats “whatever he can get his hands on,” but sometimes that means just one meal a week.
“I love meat pies from Burger King, Hungry Jack’s or McDonald’s,” he said.
Sometimes he turns to a city charity for help when he “has no money,” but most of the time he doesn’t ask for help.
“I’m not asking for alms,” he declared firmly.
He said that “sometimes” passersby offer him money.
“I was standing there and a man came up to me and gave me a $50 bill. Twenty minutes later, someone gave me $20 when I didn’t have any money,” he said.
Robert said he was forced to live on the streets when he lost his job at a glass factory.
“I was a glass trader,” he said. “I was making $108 a week, working out a couple of years ago, but I cut my finger off.
“They gave me 38 stitches and I didn’t receive the insurance money.”
Robert said that when his life began to spiral downward, everyone who knew him abandoned him.
Robert said he had been living on the streets for eight years after an injury caused him to lose his job at a glass factory.
Robert said that for a few weeks he might only have one meal, but he refused to beg.
“I trusted a lot of people and they ended up stabbing me,” he said. “They can’t hurt me, but for some reason they are attacking me.”
Despite his precarious lifestyle, Robert said his health had “never been better” and attributed his success to his training in martial arts and breakdancing.
“I’m very fit,” he said.
Robert said he did not speak to other people living on the streets.
“I want to be alone,” he said.
Sometimes the police harassed him, but he “wasn’t sure why.”
In May, it was reported that the annual New South Wales street count revealed a 25 per cent increase in the count of people sleeping rough across the state.
Authorities found 2,037 people sleeping rough in February, compared to 1,623 the previous year.
Some of the biggest increases were in coastal areas, including a nearly 80 per cent rise in the number of people sleeping rough in the Coffs Harbour council region.
Byron Shire, a popular tourist region in the state’s north, had the highest number of people sleeping rough of any local government area in the state.
This and other coastal regions, such as Sydney’s northern beaches, have become home to large encampments of homeless people sleeping in tents amid a severe shortage of affordable accommodation.
A wall at Sydney’s Wynyard station has been converted into a sort of open-air locker where homeless people can store their belongings.
Robert claimed that an injury to his hand cost him his job and he received no insurance payment for it.
Homelessness Minister Rose Jackson said the regional figures were unprecedented but not unexpected.
“We don’t just need data to tell us this – our regional communities feel it every day,” he said on Friday.
‘The alarming homeless count figures once again paint a heartbreaking picture of homelessness and rough sleeping across our state.’
Ms Jackson said the government was looking at all options to tackle the housing crisis, including a review of short-term accommodation rules.
Tougher restrictions have already been introduced in Byron Shire, where a 60-day annual limit on short-term rentals without accommodation applies.
