It is always lovely to receive encouraging comments about our work. I always hope that when such comments are written/expressed about our work that EVERYONE connected with Servants is encouraged by them – as it is surely how we all work and strive for the goals we set ourselves that allows such comments to be made?

The words below are from our Facebook page – written by the sister of one of our long-standing Carrical resos  after she had seen Narrative. I trust that you are as encouraged by these words as I am.

‘Yesterday I had the privilege of visiting Carrical House again. My brother Barry is a resident at Carrical and he is seen here with Matt Maudlin, CEO Servants Community Housing.This is the most incredible organisation based on love and caring. Reading the recently published book “Narratives” about the residents’ lives of the and the impact telling their stories had on the young people who interviewed them is totally inspirational. Servants Community Housing is a beacon of hope: a pragmatic and humane approach to solving the problems of those who are vulnerable. Thank you Servants and the young people who you involved in the daring Anthologies and Narratives project.’

There will be a full moon this Christmas Day – whatever one things in regards to full moons/behaviors etc I can tell you that I am always aware when there is one – usually by means of Housekeepers reporting less than idyllic resident behaviors!!  This being said everyone is surviving the silly season. We currently  have 88 of our 89 rooms full – just one female vacancy at Romana going spare at the present time.

Our houses have been INUNDATED with food and pressies this year – this happens every year – but not to the extent it has occurred in 2015. People are increasingly generous to Servants. Of all the generosity that has come our way this Christmas season it was perhaps the food gifts that came via our friends at Berry Street that were perhaps the most eye-opening. The quality and quantity of food delivered for the 3 houses was incredible. Yesterday Josh F dropped off his Giving Tree goodies to us – clothes/crockery/baby formula (!!)/various foodstuffs/blankets/gift cards et al. Today I picked up the cheques that had been written to Servants c/o The Giving Tree – $6500 in total. All very handy. A handful of other donations have arrived too – about $500 in total.

Hamer Court today saw Phase 1 of the new alcohol rules come into play. As of midday today residents are welcome to consume alcohol within the privacy of their own rooms but not in any public areas. From 1st February 2016 there will be no consumption of alcohol on the premises.

Romana staff took possession of their new freezer yesterday – courtesy of our friends at The Sunshine Foundation. Sadly it arrived a little beaten up and damaged.

Last Wednesday the Carrical car park became the venue for a sit down bbq dinner for the Carrical resos and members of Rotary Club of Yarra Bend. It involved some logistical challenges but was an enormous success.

Short of something  dramatic occurring within The Wonderful World of Servants in the next 31.5 hours that desperately requires Heartbeating this will be my last Heartbeat pre-Christmas. Thank you for reading my updates throughout the year and an even bigger thanks to those who have replied/commented. I find these tremendously encouraging.

Matt.

The second iteration of Carols @ Carrical occurred on Sunday evening. It was one more triumphant evening for Servants. To see the resos of Carrical, Sing Australia, Hawthorn Community Chest, Rotary Club of North Balwyn, neighbors, friends and supporters all coming together on a beautiful evening against the equally beautiful backdrop of the Carrical mansion – well, it was quite something. A true community event. I estimate we had a turn out of about 200 people – a few less than last year. On Sunday night every man and his dog was holding an inferior carols event elsewhere – so numbers wise we probably did ok. Although money has not been counted at least 450 bucks was generated for Hawthorn Community Chest – this is not to be underestimated as this makes many of our Carrical resos feel really good about themselves/Servants. Local member for Hawthorn, John Pesutto, spoke brilliantly on the night and he and Big Ted B joined the choir for the second set. Resos are already planning a still bigger and better event for 2016.

News in no particular order:

• At the time of writing we have one vacancy at Romana.
• The total of empty room nights for the fin year to date is higher than expected – but far from catastrophically so.
• MLC presented us with a gift of $1500 last week – and gave me all of 90 seconds to talk to their staff about Servants!
• Amanda and I continue to plan the way forward in terms of future Housekeeper arrangements – particularly in light of the Halls departure in mid-2016. We are encouraged by the possibilities ahead of us at the present time.
• OTG – Old Trinity Grammarians – have been hosted by each of the 3 houses at recent Community Dinners. Their interest in our work is evident.
• Our major donor recently blessed us with a gift of $30,000.
• We are waiting to hear from St John’s Anglican in regards to if they are keen to present us with the opportunity to continue talks with them about their old vicarage.
• Andre has now finished his interviewing for the Essence of Servants Project. We should have his finished report before Christmas.
• Planning for this coming Sunday’s Carols @ Carrical is underway. It should be another good evening.
• Please remember that we will be hosting our committee and staff Christmas ‘do’ this year as a brekkie at Niche on Bridge on the morning of Wednesday 16th December.
• Believe it or not one can now register for Run Melbourne 2016! Madeline and I will be spending some time working on the on-line set up for our participants for this event in the near future.
• I met with the Dept last week to discuss General Lease developments. All good.
• The Dept has informed me that the lease between Dept and Council for Hamer has now been signed. We should expect to see the Dept/Servants sub-lease any day now for our review prior to signing.

The news of the past week is a follows – in no particular order:

• Amanda returned, safely, from her adventures in Nepal.
• The Hislops returned from a week away. Ben Palmer deputized splendidly at Carrical in their absence – as he always does.
• I attended the Housing Registrar Forum – a twice annual event. Complete, utter and abject waste of time. 2.5 hours of my life I am not getting back. Purely a chest-beating exercise for the Registrar to tell a disengaged audience how terrific they think they are.
• An unknown donor gave us $1000 this week – other gifts this week included a Christmas Tree and furniture.
• The October finance figures were released this week – they look terrific. An operating surplus of $27,000 for the month to give us a YTD operating surplus of just inxs of $90,000 to the end of October.
• In mundane yet still essential news we ordered 20 new mattresses.
• Andre met with half a dozen resos this week to complete the interview phase of his Essence Project. He is now in the process of writing up his findings which he will deliver to us in early December.
• I met with a couple of Uniting Church pastors from a church community in North Balwyn who are keen to see how they might become involved further with our work.
• A group of 9 Year 9 boys from Trinity Grammar hosted a BBQ lunch at Romana for resos.
• This week has seen one new reso move into each of Romana and Carrical.
• With one or two minor exceptions all 3 houses are really settled at the present time.

An update: it has been a busy week of coming and goings as several resos have transferred from one house to another (lovely that we now have the scope to do this to house people still more appropriately) and a few resos have moved on to pastures new. In my last Heartbeat I mentioned that we have a Hamer reso we are keen to see move on as this reso’s influence on the house is somewhat detrimental – this remains a work in progress. This week I showed 2 workers from McCauley Women’s Housing around Hamer and Romana – they were given much food for thought with how our model operates; I am hoping we can develop this relationship still further. I caught up with my main contact at Council this week to talk about the now doomed Servants/Boroondara Cares housing venture – I will allow our President to elaborate on this development via a Heartbeat if he deems it necessary. I have had further discussions this week with potential Housekeepers of the future. Plans are now well developed for Carols @ Carrical on the evening of Sunday 13th December. A gentleman we have been in discussions with for several years in regards to the possibility of him becoming a reso ……… finally moved in this week. Hurrah!! It’s always lovely when you see a plan come together. Amanda remains in the tranquility of Nepal and the Hislops return from a week’s well deserved break on Saturday 6th. We have now been officially confirmed as the recipient for the 4th straight year of Josh Frydenberg’s Christmas Giving Tree Appeal – the Jewish Father Christmas indeed he is!! That is the update.

Heartbeats have been few and far between of late. For this I apologize. So a summary is necessary:

The gentleman (less than gentlemanly really yet I remain committed to keeping myself nice) we have trying to evict from Carrical has finally vacated. This is such an enormous relief to residents, staff and management alike. We are currently in the process of ‘encouraging’ a Hamer reso to move on – this too has the potential to get a little ugly.

Amanda has been on holiday for just over a week now and has 2 more weeks until she returns to the frontline.

A $10,000 donation was recently received – and we heard in the last few days that our application for funding for 20k of solar panels/batteries etc was successful. This was granted from Josh Frydenberg under the Government’s Building Stronger Communities Program. Hurrah!! The plan is to install the system at Romana where we think this will enable us to save approx. $11,000 in electricity costs.

I check our bank account every morning – just to keep abreast of where things are at – and was pleasantly surprised this week to see that the total of our accounts was just 13k short of $500,000. Some of us reading this will remember Warren’s now infamous ‘Shark Graph’ way back when. We have certainly come a long way since that time of financial stress.

HAMER LEASE!!!!! Ladies and gentlemen, I am thrilled to announce that the good folks of Boroondara Council and the Dept have finally struck a lease for 5 years at Hamer Court!! we now await a sub-lease to be sent to us for perusal prior to signing. Hurrah!!

Servants International Community Housing – SICH. Last week we finally made it internationally as Mark Hislop and I hosted a group of Singapore public servant delegate types at Carrical. This was a site visit for them as a part of their week long fact finding visit. We were asked to host them as we our model is unique and super community based. we certainly seemed to make a good impression upon them. It’s good to know we are now big in Singapore!!

One of the original Voices actors fro Scotch in 2009, Simeon, visited Carrical today to interview me and a couple of resos for  Uni journalistic piece he is compiling about how Voices in 2009 helped to shape Servants. One thing was abundantly clear – that project certainly helped shape him into the man he is today. We are planning a Community Dinner for next year with all concerned from Voices 09. Should be fun!!

The big picture of Servants 31/10/15 is exceptionally god. Yes, some serious challenges are ahead – particularly in regards to the issue of the difficult Hamer rese – but we have many reasons to feel pleased with where we are right now in the scheme of things.

Our difficult resident situation at Carrical continues. On Thursday he moved into respite accommodation with a view to a permanent move there. This means of course that he is still one of our resos at the present time. His behavior is increasingly worrying and the effects of said behaviors continue to have a very detrimental impact upon the Carrical community. Amanda and I met with his key workers on Friday arvo to express our considerable concerns about his personal wellbeing and his effect on others. It was not a totally useless meeting – but not far off! Please keep this situation in your prayers.

http://www.lavamae.org/#!lavamae-the-need/ca4p

I was sent the link above by a friend – a supporter of SCH. I was fascinated by it and thought that Heartbeat readers might be too. I am NOT for a moment suggesting we start looking into equipping buses and businesses to shower homeless people – although I am sure there are many worst things we could do!! The initial thing that grabbed me here is the dignity something as simple as a shower helps to bring to someone’s life. This was followed by the idea of just how to go about answering the problems that disadvantaged people face – an issue not a million miles away from what we are on about. Anyway, have a bit of a butchers and see what you make of it.

A couple of points of note: Tuesday was a mixed day – VCAT did not deliver us the outcome we were looking for but definitely pointed us in the right direction. I abhor the manner in which VCAT is all about process – not justice. A little piece of me bleeds inside knowing that the actions of one resident who should most certainly NOT be housed by us has such a detrimental effect on all concerned with one of or houses. Still, we will continue to play the game of process until what we perceive as justice is served.

Also on Tuesday a first time donor donated $10,000 to us.

Tuesday also saw Hamer host its’ first Community Dinner as a group of 16 Boroondara Council employees undertaking an LV came to dinner followed by the usual talk from yours truly. Former Carrical reso Josh spoke too – in fact, he spoke brilliantly. Sadly, I was unable to persuade anyone to revoke the parking ticket I received last week!

If you missed the front page of the Progress Leader this week fear not – head to either the Servants website or Facebook page to view our, dare I say, latest front page story!!

The 12 Days of Christmas? The movie 12 Monkeys perhaps? 12 Midday, the first morning of the Trent Bridge Test and Australia are already all out?

Noooooooooo!!!! 12  days since my last post to Heartbeat. A few things have happened in that time – we have had a successful AGM; the Reflections theatre season was a far bigger success than I had anticipated; we continue to ‘enjoy’ fun and games with the Carrical reso we are hoping to have removed thru VCAT;  a couple od resos have moved out of the houses at the shortest of short notice; one of longest standing and most respected resos, Big Al, he of the front cover of Anthology fame, has become very unwell and is currently in the psych ward at St V’s (please pray for him); we have received a couple of significant financial gifts in the past few days – significant in terms of who they were from rather than the $ value; I have caught up in the last week with a couple of folks from the LV WCLP visit to Servants in late July and have my eyes opened to a couple of issues – in a good way; the LV Folio group had dinner at Romana on Tuesday night, followed by a visit to see the final night of Reflections, followed by hearing me speak at HWBC – a cracking evening seemed to be had by all; I spoke at the Rotaract Club of Swinburne Uni last week and feel quietly excited by what SCH/Swinburne possibilities might exist moving into the future; Paul from Romana was interviewed and photographed in front of the new greenhouses at Romana by the Progress Leader – for next week’s front cover; Warren brought my laptop back from the brink of death and it now has, hopefully, many more months of faithful service ahead; some folks from Rotary Club of Hawthorn came down to Hamer this morning to join me and Martin in a general Spring Clean type of morning. Doubtless I have missed a few occurrences  along the way!

The week ahead looks good too. Committee meeting, VCAT, the first LV visit to Hamer and the first Community Dinner to be held at Hamer too. Exciting times!!

Last Thursday Amanda, Warren and I had our annual review meeting with the Housing Registrar.

Forrest Gump quoted the following: ‘My Momma always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gone get.’

And our annual review with the Registrar is precisely as Forrest’s Momma proclaimed. We never know in advance just what we’re in for when we visit their slightly less than hallowed halls. The chocolate we received this year was bitter, very dark, quite adversarial and, well, not appreciated at all. It was a frustrating process – made all the more so that even as they made slightly offensive remarks about Servants and how they perceive us to be ‘unprofessional’ in specific areas they were happy to turn a blind eye to their own failings. Perhaps Warren will choose to elaborate here – the issue will certainly be raised at the October committee meeting.

I attended the monthly Boroondara Cares meeting this arvo. Servants has been a very interesting observer as BC has come to some prominence in the local community over the past 12 months. One of the more fascinating occurrences to observe has been how the almost toothless and inept Foundation Boroondara has morphed into The Boroondara Cares Foundation – almost seamlessly, at least on the surface! BCF is poised to be a very significant player in the local philanthropic/charity giving area. It is encouraging to know that Servants is held in such high regards by the local Rotary Clubs – who collectively are overseeing BCF.

A Rotary member informed me in conversation afterwards that one of the reasons SCH is so loved by the various Rotary Clubs is because of our ‘impeccable brand.’ This was very encouraging to hear.

Having been in Sydney twice in the past 2 weeks for conferences I aim to provide a short document for the next committee meeting in regards to my key findings of the 6 days I have been locked away listening and learning.