You notice the windows first. Some are smashed, others boarded over. Graffiti climbs the stairwells. A tired community garden sits in the courtyard, an idea that once had hope. On the small balconies, bikes, mattresses, and bundles of clothes tell their own stories. By day it is quiet, a lull that hints at long nights.
 

“This place comes alive after dark,” says Josh, EveryMan’s Client Services Director. 

“There is a lot of drug use here. You see people come and go, and dealers know where to find buyers. On payday, it can be chaos.”

Josh has brought EveryMan Board members Toby and Zac to see what case notes can never show. Toby grew up on a housing estate in the UK and is familiar with environments like these. Zac, who joined the Board this year and focuses on governance and risk, says it is one thing to read reports and another to stand where the work happens. 

“It is easy to talk about risk frameworks and outcomes from a board table,” Zac says, 

“But when you walk through here, you see what the numbers cannot show, the human side of those outcomes. It gives everything we do a different weight.”

“You can live in a rough area,” Toby adds, 

“But if your family is okay and supportive, that makes a huge difference, and I wonder if the residents here have ever had that support.”

The tour is not staged. A burned unit still smells of smoke. Another room waits for a man soon to be released from custody. 

“We have to be really honest with clients from the beginning,” Josh says. 

“I have to tell them, I am going to put you somewhere that is going to be difficult, and I do not want to set you up to fail, but this is all we are given.” 

When it is the only option, the client will say yes. 

“He has twenty years of homelessness behind him and a long history of methamphetamine use, and I am putting him in an environment that he has worked hard to break free from, but that is all I have, and we do our very best,” Josh says.

In a corridor of the residence, Josh introduces a familiar face. Adam lives with high and complex support needs and a long history of drug abuse. He is under a psychiatric treatment order and has a trustee who controls his funds. 

“The money is rationed because he can make impulsive decisions that can cause harm,” Josh explains. 

He recently bought a laptop. Then he needed a hit. He sold it. Now he is trying to repurchase it at a much higher price while dealing with the debt that came from selling it in the first place.”

When Adam becomes unwell, the distress can ripple through the building. Temporary changes were made to help him cope, but the real challenge is what happens when he is in crisis. 

“Once he was struggling to breath, so we called an ambulance. They knew his name and said it was a police job. The police said it was an ambulance job. We waited for four hours,” Josh says. 

“That is the systemic gap men like him fall into.”

Zac says this is the kind of thing you cannot prepare for until you see it. You hear about service gaps in reports, but standing here and hearing that story, you understand how systems can fail someone.

Those gaps widen around dual diagnosis. 

“Mental health says it is a drug problem. AOD says it is a mental health problem. No one meets in the middle,” Josh says. 

Few services address both at once, and the ones that do have only a handful of longer-stay beds. In the meantime, EveryMan sees Adam two or three times a day and keeps turning up when others will not.

Toby reflects that being on the ground gives you a deep respect for the people doing this work. Zac describes the experience as humbling. 

“You cannot get this kind of perspective from paperwork. Seeing the staff turn up day after day, even when there is no easy fix, is the definition of persistence. It makes you proud to be part of an organisation that refuses to give up.” 

Toby agrees. “I work in finance, so I contribute by looking at a spreadsheet, but being here, seeing this, it gives you a real appreciation for the people doing the work on the ground.”

“We are all, in some way, the product of our surroundings,” Toby says. 

“The neighbourhoods we grow up in and the people who lift us or let us down all leave their mark. That is why the work EveryMan does matters, as it gives people a chance to rewrite the story their environment started.”

Josh sums up the reality. 

“Housing gives stability, but without access to the proper supports, that stability can slip away. When we stay alongside a bloke for a few years and help him work through what is really going on, the housing becomes sustainable. The best outcome is the quiet one, when his name never appears on our referral list again.”

Zac adds a governance lens. “You can have the best governance in the world, but if you lose sight of people, you lose the point.”

“It is painfully clear that the funding does not meet the need,” Josh says. “Without us, he would fall through every crack.”

As the group leaves, a resident dog trots past, tail up, then settles to watch them cross the courtyard. The balconies remain empty. Night will come, and the complex will stir again. At the end of it all, an EveryMan worker will knock on a door and wait to make sure their client is still there. Sometimes that is the story. Someone kept turning up. Someone made it safe to open the door.

Written by Stacey Murray