Peer Stories of Homelessness in Naarm

is a local Aboriginal cultural leader and storyteller. Much of his work is with the younger generations as he sees them as the torch-bearers of the future. Inspired by his local Aboriginal community and Kulin ancestral blood connections to Country, Uncle Larry is a senior Elder in Melbourne who working with storytelling to ensure the cultural continuity of oral traditions.

He has contributed to many organisations and cultural events over the years – Footscray Community Arts Centre (FCAC); the First Peoples exhibition at Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre, Melbourne Museum; and the Tanderrum celebration at the Melbourne Festival, to name just a few.
Uncle Larry describes himself as a pure storyteller. He sees his focus being on the oral tradition – the story as an important expression and element of Aboriginal culture. He wishes to display that Aboriginal people live in the modern world as intimately as they are connected to their past.

is a Krautungalung activist and presenter of Fire First, Black Block and Beyond the Bars programs on 3CR community radio in Naarm/Melbourne. Robbie is one of the founders of Pay The Rent, an Indigenous initiative set up to provide an independent economic resource for Aboriginal peoples, and he advocated for the Aboriginal Passport initiative. Robbie participated in the Bendigo Street campaign in 2016 by hosting events and radio broadcasts on the street about sovereignty and decolonisation. Early in the campaign along with other Koorie activists, he established number 4 Bendigo Street a Sovereign House for Indigenous people. As of August 2022 Thorpe’s own story is being captured in a new documentary film, titled Our Warrior: The Story of Robbie Thorpe.

is a proud Yorta Yorta woman who has experienced long term homelessness. She was a participant of the Bendigo Street campaign where she occupied a house at the end of street. Through the campaign, Angela secured transitional housing where she now resides.

is a Koorie man from Gippsland who before getting involved in the Bendigo Street Campaign had experienced long term homelessness. In 2016, he occupied number 13 Bendigo Street and was an active participant in the campaign. Frank is a survivor of the stolen generations and was a target of police violence during his residency in Bendigo Street. Through the work of the campaign, Frank was able to obtain public housing where he now resides.

Caitlyn Gough is a peer featured in Homeless in Hotels. She is a proud and empowered sex worker who became homeless during COVID-19. Her life journey has been pathed with mental health challenges, substance use and sobriety, PTSD and all the good things in between. Her hotel homeless experience opened her eyes to the needs of the homeless community, especially the need for peer voices and experiences to be heard to break down stigma and misguided ideas about homelessness. She hopes that the stories told in Homeless in Hotels make change

produces Radical Australia on 3CR 855AM and previously worked on the peer homelessness show Roominations. She thinks peer-produced media is revolutionary. Kelly was a founding member of the Homeless Persons Union Victoria.

is a homelessness peer health worker in Melbourne. He co-founded the Homeless Persons Union Victoria and co-produced the peer homelessness radio show Roominations on 3CR 855AM. Spike has been collaborating on the peer homelessness resource Need to Know, a resource for those on the street in Melbourne.

is Lecturer in Anthropology in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University. He writes about waste, cities, and social movements. His current projects all explore the ways in which discarded surpluses—of people, places, and things—are circulated in “global” cities. These interests draw him into a range of spaces and problems, from the twin crises of food insecurity and food waste that plague so many cities, to the alternative economies established by dumpster divers and other urban scroungers, from the spectacular “world-class” image to which many major cities aspire to the prejudice and exclusion that shape public space and criminalise the existence of the homeless who sleep on their streets.

His book, A Mass Conspiracy to Feed People: Food Not Bombs and the World-Class Waste of Global Cities, is based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Seattle and several other cities in the United States and Australasia with dumpster divers, squatters, grassroots activists, homeless residents, and chapters of Food Not Bombs – a global movement of grassroots soup kitchens.

is a gen-y Kurdish troublemaker who has worked with several groups including Food Not Bombs, Animal Friends Jogjakarta, 3CR Community Radio, Needle n Bitch, and Médecins Sans Frontières. She was one of the founders of the feminist housing collective called HUSK, an organiser of the 2019 IMARC protests and various projects such as the Lizard Bites Back and the Refugee Arts Festival. Jasmine’s involvement in radical-politics began in 2014 through squatting and attending anti-deport pickets at the Broadmeadows prison. Her involvement in social movements stretches from No Borders to Anti-Facism, and she believes in the imperative for radical media to popularise and expand liberatory struggles. She is currently directing a documentary film about housing, which uses her involvement in a 2016 direct-action housing campaign in (so-called) Collingwood to critique property and the coloniality of housing. Jasmine’s mother tongue is Sorani Kurdish and she is fluent in Persian and Bahasa Indonesia. She is currently based in the unceded land of the Woiwurrung but enjoys spending time outside of Naarm and learning new languages.