Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Thursday 14 February
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
Tonight, 20,000 Victorians are homeless. How do we get people off the streets and into shelter? Should we give money – and if so, to individuals or organisations? Is homelessness inevitable – or can we make changes to end it once and for all?
With Alan Attwood, Heather Holst, Suzy Freeman-Greene and Spike Chiappalone.
Ideas for Melbourne
We’re kicking off 2013 with a series of public forums that take a closer look at the city we call home – and the problems and challenges facing Melbourne right now.
Make your voice heard as we debate Melbourne’s future – and the kind of city we want to live in.
Featuring
Heather Holst
Heather is the CEO of HomeGround Services, a housing agency working in inner, northern and southern Melbourne. She has worked in the housing sector since 1989 and before that in the publishing industry. She holds a PhD in History.
Heather joined HomeGround in 2009. Heather’s housing experience spans tenancy advocacy, homelessness policy, program development, research, rural homelessness service coordination in both the non-profit sector and government since 1989.
She has contributed to key Victorian housing and homelessness innovations including the coordination of all services, transitional housing, standards, data, rights-based approaches and sector training.
Prior to working in the housing sector, Heather worked in the publishing industry for Penguin Books as a sales representative and then as reader and copy editor and for the Australian Women’s Book Review as business manager.
Heather has a PhD in History from the University of Melbourne. She has published several scholarly articles and book chapters and has taught history at Australian Catholic University. She is working on a book to come out later this year: Making a Home: A History of Castlemaine.
Alan Attwood
Alan Attwood, author and journalist, is a Walkley-award winner and former New York correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He has been editor of The Big Issue magazine since 2006.
Alan was born in Scotland and immigrated to Australia with his family when he was four. He has worked as an abalone packer, dishwasher, schoolbook salesman and mail sorter, but mainly as a journalist, specialising in not specialising.
In a 35-year career he has written for publications ranging from The Sunday Times, London, to Time magazine and covered events as diverse as the first free elections in South Africa, soccer in Northern Greece, political intrigue in Morocco, a US presidential campaign and four Olympic Games.
He won a Walkley Award for coverage of sport in 1998 and subsequently was a columnist for the Age. He is also the author of two published novels, Breathing Underwater and Burke’s Soldier.
Suzy Freeman-Greene
Suzy Freeman-Greene is a Melbourne journalist, writer and editor. Freeman-Greene's feature writing has appeared in publications including Good Weekend and the Australian magazine, and for many years she was a regular columnist with the Age. She is working on a series of essays about her mother’s life and death.
Spike Chiappalone
Spike is currently a member of the CHP’s Peer Education Support Program. He is an ex long-term homeless person and began his role as a member of the Pesp team in early 2012.
The highlights of his involvement in the program thus far have been participating as a panel member in a presentation at the seventh National Homelessness Conference, speaking at the LOMA annual Homelessness Network forum, membership of the CBD Homelessness Network and its planning group, delivering a presentation to the Darebin Council during Homelessness Week and participating in the City of Melbourne’s Homelessness Summit as a homelessness advisor.