The tent city occupying Martin Place, supported by Sydney's 24-7 Street Kitchen and Safe Space, is deeply offensive.

At least, it is for Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Social Housing Minister Pru Goward. Likewise for Lord Mayor Clover Moore, and no doubt many charities for whom supporting the homeless is their business, too.

It's not offensive because the people who are living in the tents and/or delivering and using the Street Kitchen's services are homeless. It is offensive because said people, simply by coming together in an organised fashion, are demonstrating the failure of governments and NGOs to meet their needs for adequate shelter, defined on their terms.

Indeed, the most offensive part of all is that Martin Place's most controversial residents have organised themselves – without permission from the designated homelessness officers in the bureaucracy; without approved, branded homelessness charity materials; and without providing any photo ops to ministers or CEOs or clergy to show how much they care about the homeless.

And the residents of Martin Place are continuing to hold out on their own terms.The Premier claims that the homeless in the plaza have been offered accommodation and are simply refusing to help themselves. The homeless and their supporters have replied that the offered accommodation is not safe, nor affordable, nor acceptable. It has included emergency accommodation that costs $26/night and facilities that have no cooking apparatus and that one must exit after four weeks.

The Lord Mayor says the state government should hand over the Sirius building for affordable housing for the homeless, but the Martin Place residents are concerned that even that would still result in the homeless being subject to invasive management techniques of large charities.

History shows that whenever inequality in society starts to increase and really show, the rich and powerful work extra hard to find a way to make the poor appear ungrateful for the crumbs they are thrown from the table. As Leonard Cohen puts it in Tower of Song: "The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor." That is: the disciplining of people who have the audacity to ask for the basics of life on their own terms is an age-old strategy of institutional power when it is struggling to maintain its face. The corporate, government, and non-government agents who each have particular stakes in getting the residents of Martin Place what they need would do better to listen to what the residents are saying.

Which is that the state government should penalise investors out of the housing market and work towards resident-managed housing models. They're saying that federal government should remove negative gearing and replace it with first home buyer incentives such as low-cost loans that are forced on financial institutions.

They're suggesting that federal legislation forces the break-up of residential property aggregations. They want us all to consider the vested interests at play in addressing homelessness and housing affordability, including those of local government and charity organisations, and decide on what our own interest really is.

Is it in the optics of homelessness – removing it from immediate view, being seen to care about the problem, using the homeless as a way to make claims about what's wrong with our society? Or could we instead enter into the complexity of how we care for each other, including listening to the testimony of those who dare to ask for more than a crappy hostel bed and/or a personal management plan?

In Martin Place, a self-determined community of homeless people is materialising the failure of those charged with using power and resources to carry out their duties. Here, some of the people who have been subject to failed homelessness policy and services are taking that power back. Any Sydneysider who wants an end to homelessness in our city should get behind them.

Dr Ann Deslandes is a freelance writer and researcher. She worked in homelessness services in Sydney 2010-2015. Twitter: @Ann_dLandes