Home is where the heart restarts

It's a cliche, and like all cliches it contains a kernel of truth.

Having a good home is the foundation of a happy, stable, fruitful life.

Nobody ventures forth into the world with confidence and purpose without the comfort of a place to call home.

So the news this week that Shepparton will receive $45 million to build homes for the homeless has to be a comfort to our whole community - because if you lift one person up we all benefit.

It is a huge investment for Shepparton, and it is part of an even larger pool of $5.4 billion from the state government's Big Housing Build plan which aims to tackle the running sore of homelessness from which every developed country in the world suffers.

However, without being churlish we must ask specifically why Shepparton has only received $45 million when the most recent data available shows our fair city has the highest rate of homelessness in regional Victoria?

Yet Ballarat, Bendigo, Geelong and La Trobe have all received significantly more from the Big Housing Build initiative.

Just like a faith-based belief system, government funding often works in mysterious ways.

Anyway, our slice of the cake is still the most significant state housing investment the region has ever received and so it deserves our applause.

It is impossible to underestimate the importance of providing human beings with a decent place to call home.

I have spoken to enough people at the bottom of the pile, our recovering alcoholics, our drug addicts, our victims of domestic violence and our homeless to know that a safe place to call home is where the recovery of the soul begins.

And I'm not just speaking as a journalist.

There have been periods in my life that I have felt the anxiety and humiliation of having nowhere to call home. I am sure there are thousands more like me.

As a student I lived in squats and the spare rooms of friends because I had no rent money.

Every day was a struggle to get up and get going. Depending on the generosity of strangers was like walking a daily tightrope over misery or the abyss.

Similarly, when a marriage failed I spent weeks going to work and sleeping on the floors and couches of friends trying to pick up the pieces of my life. These may have been temporary brushes with homelessness, but they were enough to bring on substance abuse and what I now realise was a deepening depression. They were dark times that I now look back upon with no joy at all.

In both cases, life got back on track the moment I found a place to call my own.

Shepparton's share of the government's Big Housing Build will create at least 150 new social housing homes here.

It's not a silver bullet for our homelessness problems, but it does offer 150 chances to rebuild several hundred lives.

It also serves to remind us of the difference between a home and a house. A home is not real estate to be bought and sold as private financial investment. It's social capital that builds whole communities and it's the foundation of a decent society.

● John Lewis is journalist at The News.