The people that walk into Paul’s life trust nobody. This is how he helps them

While it is now dwarfed by the mega-developments that have come to define Parramatta Square, the 1885-built Leigh Memorial Church is the only building in Sydney’s second CBD where dozens – sometimes hundreds – of people line up at 7.30am each day to get in.

Inside the walls of the church and its hall, an army of volunteers has spent an hour cooking breakfast for those outside. And someone’s been here since before dawn. Paul Moussa, a 71-year-old Lebanese-Australian man with missing teeth and a grey hoodie, co-ordinates Meals Plus within Parramatta Mission, an outreach charity for people across western Sydney who are either homeless or doing it tough.

The social worker is the first port of call for hundreds in the community, which means he is often woken up by his phone ringing – to the tune of the Lebanese national anthem – in the early hours. On a warm Wednesday morning when the Herald visits in March, Moussa arrived about 3.30am. Sitting in his office surrounded by the artwork of community members, Moussa fills out NCAT paperwork, writes job references, and searches for homes for those who will soon walk through the door.

As Moussa opens the doors at 8am, the church hall and courtyard fill as breakfast – a variety of eggs, toast and cereal – is served. Nicole Anderson has just sat down on a bench. She arrived at Parramatta Mission after beginning to deal with the trauma of having family members killed. She’s in her third year of studying social work, and says the community has given her a sense of stability in life.

“It’s a place where everybody interacts with everybody,” she says. “This is a place where people, whether they’ve got mental health [issues], are drug addicts, alcoholics, whatever, they always know this is a safe place to come.”

A painted banner above the bains-marie highlights the charity’s values, including grace, dignity, faith, and hope. “Everyone is welcome,” Moussa says. “You haven’t got to fill out a form, ‘you’re suitable, you’re not’.”

Faith? “Church can conjure up trauma,” he says. “We don’t use the word faith, we use the word trust. You build someone’s trust … with hospitality. So if you’re looking for KPIs: somebody comes in hungry with their head down, they walk out with a full stomach and their head up. And when you feel comfortable, you might invite us on your journey.”

Despite Parramatta’s economic rise, those who have been left behind are struggling. Last year’s street count identified 222 sleeping rough in the area, up from 156 a decade ago, although down from its 291 peak in 2024.

“Behind every statistic is a person,” says Geoff Smith, the charity’s chief executive and lead minister of Parramatta Community Uniting Church. The group launched a campaign this week to highlight the reality of life on the street through the use of a mock real estate ad, with Ray White real estate agent Peter Vines fronting a video advertising a “brutally authentic opportunity” for sleeping rough.

Western Sydney’s homeless population has no trust in governments nor many of the non-government organisations that want to help, Moussa says. “People don’t choose to be homeless, but they choose homelessness because they have no confidence in the system. And to manage the system, you need to be Einstein.”

Volunteers are clearing breakfast plates away when 25-year-old Ashool arrives at the door. Moussa conjures up some extra toast and leftovers of the breakfast service and sits him down to enjoy the meal.

You wouldn’t know it from his neat black T-shirt and blue business shirt, but the Fijian national has been sleeping on the edge of Prince Alfred Square for almost a month. His housemate with mental health issues kicked him and a friend out earlier this year. He’s since learnt the locations of every outdoor power socket in Parramatta. He needs to charge his phone to work late at night delivering food on Uber Eats, for which he spends $80 a week renting an e-bike. He turned up after an outreach worker approached and told him about a place for free meals.

“We’re going to work this out,” Moussa tells the young man as he puts his arms on his shoulders, peppering him with practical questions. Does he have a visa? Does he have any training? Does he need a resume? “First thing, let’s get you some clothes.”

“You’re going to make me cry,” Ashool says. It’s the first time he feels cared for, he says, in more than three years of living in Australia. But the 71-year-old won’t allow tears. “If you cry, I cry,” he says.

It is now almost noon. In the kitchen, the final preparations are being made for the lunch service. Hayley Dickerson, a longtime chef who joined the group this year, is overseeing the serving of some vegetables and meat.

“Everyone’s pretty rapt about what they’re getting, a nutritious meal,” she says. The fact that two delicious, healthy meals are being served to hundreds of guests each day is remarkable: the group relies almost entirely on donated goods, meaning there’s little consistency in what they can cook with. Twice a week, OzHarvest delivers fresh food. Other times, the City of Parramatta drops off leftover catering from its events, and the local Buddhist temple brings in 50 vegetarian meals.

Before the lunch service begins, in a bright room at the front of the building, about a dozen government agencies, other charities and not-for-profits have set up tables for a community hub to connect guests to essential services.

Jenny Oates, a staff member at the charity, helped establish the hub when trying to get help for someone who was homeless.

“They couldn’t get housing because they didn’t have Centrelink. They couldn’t get Centrelink because they didn’t have a bank account,” she said.

“They couldn’t get a bank account because they had no ID. If you’re on the street or you’re escaping DV, you don’t have that stuff.

“So we thought about the hub to bring together: Births, Deaths and Marriages, Centrelink, Service NSW and Housing, so that we could fast-track people … rather than having to send them out to different situations.”

Centrelink found it so useful that the agency has employed a staff member to be on site every day.

‘Parramatta would be a sad place without this’

“I wouldn’t be where I am now without it,” says 59-year-old Julie Sutherland of the community she has formed at the centre. She’s attended daily for years.

“Paul is down as my next-of-kin. I call him my stepdad. When I [was] in hospital, when I lost it taking ice, I came here. He rang the ambulance and talked me into going to Cumberland [mental health facility]. He sent someone in with underwear and clothes. He’s just a really caring person.

“Without this place, there’d be a lot more people hungry, there’d be a lot more shoplifting, there’d be a lot more fighting on the streets … Parramatta would be a sad place without this.”

The reason for the success is partly in the group’s approach to its community members. “We help people achieve what they want,” Moussa says. “We journey with someone. We don’t walk behind them, pushing them to where we think they should go. We don’t walk in front of them leading them to somewhere they don’t want to go … Personally, I value a community response rather than a government response.”

But the organisation is still pushing for government funding, especially as services, including Centrelink and Homes NSW, refer clients to Parramatta Mission – when it should be the other way around. The group has plans in with the council for a renovation that would turn the community space into a modern centre with office space above it to bring in revenue. But money right now is tight.

Many politicians come and visit – some say they’ll come but never do. “The only good one is [state MP for Parramatta] Donna Davis,” Moussa says. She often rings them if someone is in need.

Moussa’s approach to guests is hospitable, but firm. He yells at guests not to take too much food from the community food collection held in the afternoon, and, on occasion, has to break up a fight. His work earned him a Medal of the Order of Australia in 2025.

“I had an argument with one of the ministers [a decade ago]. They used to charge people for meals, $1 for breakfast and $3 for lunch … so when a bloke owed $400, they wouldn’t feed him. I said, ‘Take that cross out of the church and put in a cash register, and you can bloody well pray to that.’”

The meals are now free.

“I’m a dinosaur and a control freak and all those negative things,” he says with a grin. “But it is the energies of many – our volunteers, our community and our clients. We are a community within a community.”

It might be the serious lack of sleep, but Moussa says he has two regular dreams: one is where no one turns up to Parramatta Mission because no one is hungry. The other is where the street outside is full of people trying to get in. “Let’s do this,” Moussa tells his volunteers in his dream. “Either way, I’m happy.”