FOR most people, having a place to call home is one of those enormous privileges that we too often take for granted. Not so for Vickie Clutterbuck, and a number of Hunter residents for whom it is not only a growing problem but a fact of daily life.
Data from the 2016 census released in March 2018 revealed that Hunter homelessness was on the rise, this newspaper reported at the time. That was before COVID arrived to upend many people's worlds, before the war in Ukraine. It also pre-dates the recent sharp spikes in cost of living and the interest rate rises designed to quell them, not to mention the housing affordability problems for many trying to enter the market. It is unlikely we can expect the figures from the most recent census to look much better when they are released.
