By Frances Crimmins, YWCA Canberra Chief Executive Officer
Canberra Times’ front-page report on 31 July Inside her mountain of rubbish, she tests our tolerance and compassion (originally titled “How to deal with the sweary rants of the homeless woman on the street”) named a rough sleeping homeless woman, photographed her conditions and sourced anonymous Facebook comments to further malign her. This article has done an immense disservice to the woman in question, the community services which homeless people rely on, and the generosity of Canberrans. Rather than endeavouring to hold the government or ACT Housing decision-makers to account for the increase in rough-sleeping in Canberra, the article bemoans the impact on the local economy and real estate by interviewing stakeholders who were peripheral to the issue.
YWCA Canberra is a specialist homelessness service provider having supplied safe and appropriate housing to women and families in Canberra since 1929. Over 2025-26 our Housing Support Unit assisted more than 400 clients, of which roughly 60% were women. Many of these clients were either homeless or facing imminent homelessness due to domestic violence, financial pressures or other challenges. Staff at YWCA Canberra, and other social welfare organisations, proudly meet the needs of immensely vulnerable people every day. Their existence does not ‘test’ the tolerance and compassion of my staff, as the article would suggest. Rather, what is deeply testing is community indifference and the challenges of persistent demand without suitable supported housing options.
While the Canberra Times saw fit to interview the Property Council and ACT Policing in relation to this woman’s plight and her impact on the local economy, no community welfare services were interviewed. No social workers were quoted. And no references to longstanding and embedded issues in Housing ACT, which have been the subject of at least two independent statutory inquiries, were made. Most concerningly, several quotes in the article are from Facebook users under an ‘Anonymous’ setting.
I implore the Canberra Times to exercise better journalistic methods and standards when it comes to discussing homelessness in Canberra.
YWCA Canberra sent this as a Letter to the Editor of the Canberra Times on 3 August 2026