Just five years on from his second stint living rough, Jaron Green feels like he’s found genuine meaning in his life.
After spending time homeless while growing up, Mr Green said he was “horrified” when drug and alcohol problems led him back to the Perth streets as an adult.
He got to a St Patrick’s Community Support Centre in 2019 after suffering a stroke and losing both his job and home, yet started volunteering at the homeless service while he was still a resident.
It proved the start of something special, as he climbed the ranks from a volunteer, to paid work cleaning and in emergency relief, before a knack for computers saw him become the team’s “accidental IT guy”.
From living at St Patrick’s to working there, Mr Green said sharing his lived experience and giving back to people who helped him facilitated his rise.
“I was actually a street kid when I was a little young fella, and it was like I'd wasted 20 years and ended up back at square on … I was horrified,” he told AAP.
“For the first time I did feel utterly alone and like there was no one else that was going to support me, and then I realised - why do I need to help?
“Why aren't I, with all the s*** I know, the one that can give help?”
St Patrick’s is set to build a new support centre and more housing for homeless people after a number of donations from Western Australian organisations helped them raise $22 million, including from the state government and the Minderoo Foundation.
Perhaps no one can speak to the importance of support networks quite like Mr Green, who described social workers as “everything”.
“I know I can't do everything, and a lot of people think they can solve the world's problems themselves and go in all gung-ho, but it's really all about pooling resources,” he said.
“We just need to redistribute our resources to (social workers) because they're doing great work ... in terms of how important social workers are, they're everything.”
The announcement of extra investment comes during National Homelessness Week, where revealing data showed tens of thousands of Australian children are finding it hard to secure a home even after they seek professional help.
St Patrick’s CEO Michael Piu said demand for his organisation's services were growing exponentially with the not-for-profit sector seeing a 30 per cent increase across the board in the last year.
Securing funding for those services could help more people turn things around much like Mr Green has as an employee at St Patrick’s.
“I've had as equal footing as anyone else in the room … they've listened to me and my point of view and taught me, but they've never made me feel like I was lesser,” he said.
“To be part of it, and to be doing something productive with my life and have some meaning, is the greatest miracle.”
