Haven grew from the hearth

 

It’s true to say Haven grew from the hearth, for it began over orange melamine plates in the kitchen cabinet of the Bendigo Trades Hall. 

The psychedelic '70s had suddenly turned sober as one after another, all the city’s abattoirs, most of its meatworks and several large food processors shut their doors. In just two short years almost 700 men were thrown out of work, the effect rippling throughout the community as Bendigo’s unemployment rate grew to the fourth highest in the state.

The hall of advocacy became a crisis centre. From the backrooms the unionists' wives organised food parcels and provided other practical aid to support struggling families who had lost their sole breadwinner.

In 1978 the Bendigo Urban Emergency Accommodation Resource Centre - as the wives' collective had become under the Trades Hall umbrella - was officially incorporated and became the first emergency housing program in Victoria funded by the state government.

During the next 16 years BUEARC, under the no-nonsense leadership of Elaine McNamara, relied on the goodwill and good intentions of mainly volunteer staff who dispensed emergency cash relief, advised tenants of their rights and worked to find employment for the jobless.

In the late '80s and early '90s there was no shortage of people needing crisis support as globalisation swept like a tsunami through the manufacturing, clothing, textiles and footwear sectors. Names that had long been part of Bendigo like Crestknit, BLB and Gloria Mills closed, or went offshore, changing the regional job market forever.

The picture was bleak when Ken Marchingo took the helm in 1994. BUEARC, now Bendigo Emergency Housing, was mired in debt. It would take two years to repay creditors, a feat achieved by by reselling through an op shop secondhand furniture and household goods bought at auctions.

But rationalisation was the byword of the decade and the not-for-profits would not escape. In 1996 the State Government announced a sweeping policy change that saw the 99 emergency housing agencies across Victoria replaced by 15 transitional housing organisations. Only six of the 99 had survived.

On July 1, 1997, Bendigo Emergency Housing became Loddon Mallee Housing Services Ltd with an annual budget topping $1 million. By 2000 its staff were being professionally trained through its own Registered Training Organisation, delivering nationally accredited programs, and LMHS began reaching into the community, supporting youth engagement programs like Lead On and helping to redevelop programs in  the newest incarnation of the Bendigo Aboriginal Co-operative.

But it was by becoming the first registered Affordable Housing Association in Victoria in 2005 that LMHS gained real purchase. Now it was able to build properties to house some of those people in crisis and transitional housing and by 2007 it had delivered its first 100 homes

LMHS initiated and with a core few others formed the peak group PowerHousing Australia, now comprising 28 like organisations, in order  to gain greater leverage with the banks and aggregate their needs for the sector 

Then federal and state funding was ramped up to help counter the effects of the global financial crisis and LMHS embarked on more than $100 million worth of new projects from Warrnambool to Traralgon and Mildura to Geelong, including delivering the largest single residential project under the stimulus package - 98 apartments on 10 levels at Tram Road, Doncaster Hill.

Its staff burgeoned from 60 to more than 120, the balance sheet grew to more than a quarter of a billion dollars and by now LMHS was in desperate need of new quarters.

From the antiquated warren of Trades Hall, the organisation – rebranded to better reflect its mission and statewide growth - moved to its purpose-built headquarters in March 2011.

Haven had come home.

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