The mayor of the state's largest local government area by population says he suspects some of the people begging at intersections are using whatever money they scrape together to buy drugs.
abc.net.au/news/mayor-calls-for-begging-crackdown-as-homelessness-rises-in-wa/102130296The mayor of Western Australia's largest local government area by population has called for a coordinated approach to deal with an increasing number of people begging at traffic lights.WA has the highest number of rough sleepers in Australia
He said it was "impossible" to travel through the City of Stirling without feeling unsafe at traffic lights. "Sometimes there are those people who have still got their squeegees, quite often the squeegee looks like it's going to make your car more dirty than clean, and then they have an expectation they're going to get paid for it," Mr Irwin said.
"The problem with the people at traffic lights is I have a strong feeling most of this money is going towards drug-taking and we have a lot of evidence of that."According to census data released today, WA has the highest proportion of rough sleepers in the country.Overall, homelessness in WA has increased by 8.6 per cent in the five years between the 2016 and 2021 census.
"The only way we can deal with it is actually fine the people who are at the traffic lights — we don't think that's going to be a solution," he said.
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