Homelessness is closer to many of us than we realize.
Starting our Journey
Kay Fitzgerald was a loving mother who knew how to make a home. The charity was set up by her son, Gary and granddaughter Mia, to commemorate her life. The main aim of the charity is to provide solutions to Australia’s housing crisis.
Gary experienced this several years ago and was shocked at how close he came to becoming homeless. Members of the team he has gathered also know the shocking truth of how easy it is to become homeless. All of these people have similar stories: they have worked for the majority of their adult lives, and some have university degrees and professional jobs.Then one incident upset their lives and they faced the real prospect of not being able to afford a roof over their heads.
Gary had been a policeman on the hard streets of Kings Cross in the 80s, and he saw firsthand the social problems caused by the lack of affordable housing. He came face to-face with the downward spiral that people can become trapped in when they lose their homes. Most of the young men and women he dealt with during those years had little chance to get themselves out of their situation without help. There wasn't enough help then, and there definitely isn't now. He saw children stuck in generational poverty without much chance because they did not have a stable home. The lack of a home means they cannot get a good or even sufficient education to break out of the cycle of poverty.
Today, forty years later, the situation has only become worse.
It may not be so obvious but it is insidious and more Australians are homeless than ever before.
Kings Cross is not the sleazy, drug-ridden place it was in the 80s any longer. However, the problems that were so obvious in Kings Cross in the 80s have just moved; they haven’t gone away.
Gary entered the real estate industry after leaving the police force and became the CEO of several successful companies. He was then equipped to have a thorough understanding of the home market due to his thirty years of expertise. He is aware of how to get the most out of developers and construction firms. Read some of Professor Eileen Baldry’s writing, Gary. Her numerous publications’ analyses of the “cycles of hardship” captivated him. Baldry’s writing had a real impact on Gary, who started looking into the government’s housing crisis efforts in-depth. Later, he decided to pursue an MBA and wrote a thesis on affordable housing.
All the pieces were in place and Fitzgerald Housing was launched.
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