About Climate/Housing
Why do I spend hours on this website when I could be out earning big bucks, or having fun? What am I trying to achieve here? How can you be part of it? Here's a little introduction to me and the reason for this website.
Introducing Jon Eastgate
I've spent most of the past four decades working on affordable housing and homelessness. As a young Social Work Student in 1982 I did a placement in Inala, a Housing Commission suburb on the outskirts of Brisbane, and became fascinated with the idea of public housing and what it does for its tenants. I realised (which didn't take any great intelligence on my part) that secure, affordable housing is one of the cornerstones of a decent life, and developed a passion for making that available to as many people as possible.
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In 1986, at the tender age of 24, I was offered the chance to become the first paid employee of the Maryborough Housing Action Group, a wonderful local organisation providing crisis housing and support for families. Over the next three years I ran a little homelessness service and worked with others to create a service for homeless men, a sister service in Hervey Bay and a small complex of permanent community housing units. But I found myself increasingly wanting to understand why it was that we had so many people at risk of homelessness. I got involved in the State-wide activity around International Year of Shelter for the Homeless in 1987 and at the end of the worked with the rest of the group to transform that committee into Queensland Shelter. Then in 1989 I moved back to my home city of Brisbane and started working for the Queensland Council of Social Service, travelling the State talking to people about developing local community housing projects.
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In 1994 I made another big move, going to work in the newly-formed Community Development section of Brisbane City Council. At the time I was feeling jaded about housing and wanted to do something different, but before too long I was drawn back into it because a couple of our senior Councillors thought Council should be doing more to ensure a supply of affordable housing in our rapidly gentrifying city. The result was eight rewarding years working on Council initiatives to support homeless and low income people, the highlight of which was leading Council's part in the creation of Brisbane Housing Company.
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In 2006 I made what I suspect might be the last move of my working life, forming 99 Consulting with my good friends Helen Wallace and Judith Hunter. 99 Consulting is mostly just me these days, and I earn my living and have fun working for a number of great housing, homelessness and human service organisations.
Why Climate/Housing?
Like everyone else in the world who is paying attention, I have been appalled over the past 25 years at the way we are careering towards climate catastrophe while our governments and mega-corporations try to carry on as if it didn't matter. It's personal for me - in 2011 my home was inundated by the Brisbane flood, and in 2022 we had to evacuate again as the waters came perilously close.
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But more importantly I am now a grandfather. The thought of the kind of world I will be leaving behind for my two little grandsons keeps me awake at night. So I've increasingly got more engaged with climate activism. I'm involved with the Queensland group of Australia's Religious Response to Climate Change and recently joined members of my community to lobby our State member about the Queensland CAN Roadmap. I've also been writing a series of letters to our Prime Minister and other national leaders urging them to do more.
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A few years ago I went to a talk by meteorologist and theologian Mick Pope about a book he had just written on eco-theology. During his talk he referred to an image he drew from another writer. It is like we are stonemasons the middle of building a massive cathedral. Somewhere out there there is a big picture plan about how this cathedral is going to be built, but we have only a hazy view of what that is. In the meantime, we have this one stone that we are dressing to be the best possible shape to fit into the wall next to us. All we can usefully do is the best job we possibly can on our stone, leaving it up to others to do their bit and trusting, or at least hoping, that it all comes together in the end.
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So I thought, what is the stone I am working on? Well, for four decades I've been toiling away in the housing and homelessness sector. I've got a great knowledge of the sector, I like to think that I'm reasonably well respected for what I do, and my contribution to this sector has been the biggest labour and passion of my working life. What would happen if I saw this as my field of action, the stone I was labouring on?
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As I started to research the question I realised two things. The first is that housing actually has a massive impact on climate. The energy we use in building our homes and in living in them accounts for about a quarter of all global emissions. And while owner-occupiers have a level of control over their housing and can make change, low income tenants have none.
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The second was that while there are a lot of people in the housing sector doing good things to mitigate their climate impacts, it's not easy to find out who they are, what they are doing and how they are doing it. Efforts are fragmented and there is not a shared sense that this is something we do.
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And so the idea for Climate/Housing was born.
Like to Help?
Even though I run a little consulting business, there is no sense in which Climate/Housing is a business venture. I have no plan or expectation that it will earn me money - in fact I expect that I will be subsidising it myself for as long as it exists. I'm fine with this. I'm near the end of my career and I've earned enough over my lifetime that I could afford to sit back and strum my guitar all day if that was my vision of a good life.
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However, it is a big job. It's taken me about four years to get to the stage of launching it on the unsuspecting public, working on it in the bits of downtime I get between paid consulting gigs. It's not in any sense complete. What it needs most is some real life stories to go with the basic content. My hope is that it will become a living resource, that as people do great pieces of work they will let me know about them, send me information and articles, and that between all of us we can pull together something that really builds up our collective contribution to preserving a livable world for all our children and grandchildren.
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If you'd like to contribute a story or something from your experience to this site, here's a set of Contribution Guidelines. If you think you might have something to share but you'd like to talk about it (or you just want to have a chat about climate change and housing) use the details at the bottom of the page to get in touch.