Doug Taylor, Sydney Leadership 2004
Getting 70 rough sleepers off the streets of Woolloomooloo and into permanent private housing this year was the achievement of an unlikely alliance that included a prominent financial institution, a law firm, a property group, the local council and community workers and an NGO.
United Way Chief Executive Officer, Doug Taylor, says the collaborative approach, which he learnt in the Sydney Leadership program, was central to the success of the project. Doug played the important role of bringing together the in-depth knowledge of homelessness experts—including Sydney Leadership 2011 alumnus, Elizabeth Giles, from the City of Sydney—with the technical skills of corporate partners to get the project off the ground.
Their work culminated in the announcement in August by Federal Minister for Social Inclusion and Human Services Tanya Plibersek and NSW Government Minister for Community Services Pru Goward of $2.8M funding to pay for private accommodation for 70 homeless people in the suburb in inner Sydney and already local homeless people have started to move into their new homes.
As Doug looked around at people at the launch he had met in his first job, also working on inner city homelessness, many years ago, he reflected on the structural shift that the Woolloomooloo project represents: moving away from the 'housing ready' approach common in Australia—where rough sleepers are moved across a series of accommodation settings, from crisis accommodation to medium-term and finally to long-term housing—to a new approach which sets in place permanent accommodation with the necessary support services.
Doug recalls the early stages in the search for a solution to the local homelessness problem (rather than just continuing to support rough sleepers living on the streets).
“It became apparent that we needed to ask rough sleepers themselves what their needs and aspirations were—an obvious first step that is often overlooked," he says.
A survey by the Mercy Foundation revealed some startling information, including the fact that more than two in three homeless people have some form of serious health condition and almost half have spend time in police cells. Having drawn a picture of the local face of homelessness, the business case was made for taking the rough sleepers off the streets permanently. UBS Senior Economist Scott Haslem published a paper showing that getting rough sleepers into long term housing in the United States has an 80% success rate. A model drafted by Freehills demonstrated a potential saving to government of more than $4.5 million over three years.
Doug says that when complex, cross-sectoral problems are tackled, so often the benefits of working together are overlooked. Years after completing Sydney Leadership program, though, Doug continues to approach problems guided by his “take-homes” from the year-long program—being clear on purpose and having the courage to admit he may not immediately have all the answers.
In case of the Woolloomooloo rough sleepers project, it involved reaching out to other organisations with different workplace cultures and nurturing a coalition with no defined leader.
“We stepped into an open space that’s very different from leading within one’s organisation and that’s when it becomes more complicated,” Doug explains. Through the Sydney Leadership program, Doug learned to trust his instincts; that even the most successful leaders expose their vulnerability by going outside their comfort zone.
Where non-governmental organisations are concerned, Doug says it is easy to get overloaded by the amount of work and good causes begging to be taken on.
“There is a lot of noise in the not-for-profit sector and a lot of activity but little is focused on the adaptive needs and challenges—how to listen, learn and respond to problems where there is no quick technical fix. “The paradigms that Sydney Leadership instils really gives you the opportunity to ask yourself, ‘Am I just busy or am I really making a difference in ways that matter?’”
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Read a story by Stephen Lunn in The Australian about the paper by UBS Warburg economist Scott Haslem.
Find out more about the Sydney Leadership program.
