If Melbourne’s homeless residents had a public platform to address the city, what would they choose to say?
That was the question that prompted writer and social researcher Meg Mundell to embark on a public street art project that explores ideas of home, belonging and inequality from the perspective of people who have experienced homelessness.
HOME TRUTHS: Postcards Unsheltered, which is currently on display in the CBD and neighbourhoods across inner Melbourne, features postcards handwritten by 18 people who have experienced life without a safe place to sleep.
Mundell has had an interest in homelessness and social inequality since she took a community journalism class as a teenager. She once ran a series of writing workshops for residents at Elizabeth Street Common Ground (community housing run by Launch Housing and Unison), which led to a book of true stories written by people who have experienced homelessness, called We Are Here.
We asked her some questions about this new project that aims to help erode the persistent stigma surrounding the experience of homelessness by giving people who have lived it a chance to have their voices heard.
There are so many myths surrounding homelessness, so much prejudice, blame and misconception, and I’m often thinking: How do we turn that around? Because it’s not warranted. I wanted to give people who have experienced or are currently experiencing homelessness a platform to speak in an unfiltered, direct, way with the hope that when people hear their words some of that misinformation will melt away.
Postcards are familiar. They have good associations, and they are a way to send a message home. They are intimate and personal. But they are also semi-public, given that anyone can read them when they are sent in the mail. And they are also out there in the elements, in the public eye, like some people who are experiencing homelessness.
My hope was that people would get curious and stop to read the messages and maybe a connection could be made.
I reached out to people I knew from my writing workshops. I went into the city and talked to people who are currently sleeping rough. And I looked through some online publications to find people who had written about their experience.
I gave everyone a stamped postcard addressed to “Dear Melbourne”, plus some writing prompts. They didn’t have to write about homelessness. It could be about what “home” means to them, or their dream home, something precious to them — a person, a place, a pet… But most people wanted to tell their story. All the contributors were paid.
Domestic violence came up a lot. One person wrote their postcard as a childhood memory of being in a women’s refuge. The line that stands out is, “A house with bars on the windows is a refuge, but it’s not a home.”
Many wrote about systemic failures, like Sean:
“there’s enough food, water SHELTER to go around. There always has been. Anybody who tells you otherwise has something to profit from the perception of absence.”
Overall, reading all the postcards I was struck by humanity, kindness and creativity. People who have experienced homelessness are not passive victims: They have agency, opinions, wisdom and life experience and they are all different.
I hope that people will have a moment of emotional connection with another human being through their words and their handwriting. Homelessness is not just numbers and policy, it’s people’s lives. Everyone deserves to be safe. Let’s just provide homes for people, so they can go out into the world and do wonderful things.
A billboard at 59 Bourke St will display all 18 postcards together over the first half of November. Posters will also rotate around Carlton, North Melbourne, Flemington, Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, South Melbourne, Cremorne, Footscray, Balaclava and St Kilda during November. HOME TRUTHS is supported by the City of Melbourne Arts Grants and StreetSmart Australia.
