Offers flood in for homeless

By Bridget Brady
CRANBOURNE residents opened their hearts and homes this week, offering a homeless single mother places to live.
Last week the News reported that Ms Camm, 33, sometimes slept in her car because she had nowhere else to stay. She has since looked at a one-bedroom unit that may be her future temporary home and said she would decide whether to take up the offer soon.
About 20 people contacted the News and invited Ms Camm into their homes, and the Cranbourne Information and Support Service (CISS) received five offers of accommodation.
Ms Camm said she was overwhelmed by the generosity of Cranbourne people.
“I could not believe the response,” she said.
“I have been telling people I could get references from previous rentals and sometimes they didn’t even want to see them. They don’t even know me and they have been so generous.”
Steven Clay, 29, offered Ms Camm his fully contained one-bedroom unit to rent after he was “touched” by Ms Camm’s story.
“My fiancee read the story and put it down in front of me and said ‘how bad is this’. I read it and said we have got to do something. We have the unit just sitting there and it just needs cleaning up a bit.
“She is a very nice lady and I would be happy to have her here.”
CISS outreach community information worker Anne Proud said the public response to Ms Camm’s homelessness was wonderful.
“But the main guts of what she was trying to get across was the lack of housing, which has not changed,” Ms Proud said.
“And it’s not going to get better around here, only tighter. But at least she has given it a voice and has given a local awareness about this to people if they didn’t know about the problem before.”
One of the generous offers came from Cranbourne resident Brenda Costoglou, who said she was aware people slept “rough” in the area.
“Anything would be better than sleeping in a car. I could not imagine that,” she said.