HOMELESSNESS services organisations have called on governments to increase social housing supply and boost services as the latest official data shows more people are missing out on emergency accommodation and housing.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW)’s Specialist homelessness services annual report 2023-24 showed almost 280,1000 people have been assisted by specialist homelessness agencies in the past year.
Up to 163,000 clients of specialist homelessness services requested either short-, medium- or long-term accommodation in the past year, and up to one-third of people who need short-term or emergency accommodation missed out.
The amount of people already sleeping rough when first accessing a service increased 13% in the past year, making for a total increase of 33% in the past two years.
Meanwhile, there was no housing for 70% of people who needed long-term housing, leaving 76,688 Australians who requested help to fend for themselves.
The data revealed amount of people seeking help as a result of housing affordability has increased a further 15.7% in the past year. Australians have had to deal with sky-high rents and crushingly low vacancy rates in the rental market in recent years.
“This is a humanitarian crisis and these shocking new figures must be a wake-up call for governments across Australia,” said Homelessness Australia CEO Kate Colvin.
“We are failing people at every turn – more families, workers and older Australians are being pushed to breaking point by skyrocketing rents and a broken housing system.
“We need an immediate injection of funding to stop the crisis from worsening. This is no longer a challenge for just the most vulnerable – working Australians and families are becoming homeless. Governments need to step up before the emergency spirals even further out of control.”
The newly released Australian Housing Monitor, the product of research by UNSW and University of Queensland in partnership with Homelessness Australia, showed worsening rental affordability stress has driven a 22% surge in people experiencing rough sleeping over the past three years, while 15% of people who are in homelessness services are people who are working.
The AIHW data also found a rise in persistent homelessness, up to 37,800 Australians in the past year, compared to 29,500 clients in 2018-19.
Homelessness Australia called on federal and state governments to deliver an emergency homelessness investment to stop people becoming homeless, Housing First programs to stop people cycling in and out of homelessness, and an expansion of social housing.
“The figures we are seeing today represent a failure of policy and lack of political will,” Colvin said.
The state that saw the biggest increase in rough sleeping over the past two years was Queensland with a 51% spike, followed by Western Australia with a 35% increase, South Australia with a 30% increase and Victoria with an 18% increase.
Homelessness NSW commended the NSW government’s $5.1 billion allocation to social housing in this year’s state budget, however said, “but this cannot be the sum total of our efforts.
“We need sustained, ongoing investment. Homelessness Services are doing everything they can, but without the housing and funding to back them, the situation will only worsen. We need stronger action, and we need it now,” said Homelessness NSW CEO Dominique Rowe.
It called for an increase in Specialist Homelessness Service program funding by at least 30%, or around $96 million annually, and a $2 billion annual investment into social housing over the next decade to deliver 10,000 additional social housing properties per year, aiming to achieve 10% of all housing being social housing by 2050.
Community housing provider organisation PowerHousing Australia recently unveiled its ambitious target of also making one in every 10 homes social or affordable within 20 years.
In Victoria, the number of working Victorians seeking homelessness help has surged to a record high, with a 23% rise over the past five years.
Council to Homeless Persons chief executive officer Deborah Di Natale said the sharp surge “shows the state desperately needs more ambition in tackling the housing crisis”.
“Having a job is no longer protection against homelessness, which is an alarming reality that we can only fix by investing in more public and community housing.”
More than 39% of all people using homelessness services nationally have experienced family and domestic violence (FDV). Clients who had experienced FDV in 2023-24 were most likely to be female (75%); aged 25-44 (45%); and living as a single parent with one or more children (48%).
In Victoria, women aged between 20 and 39 are the main demographic seeking support. More than half (55%) of all women, young people, and children who visited specialist homelessness services were experiencing family and domestic violence.
Women made up 58% of the 102,000 people across the state who sought homelessness support. The highest concentration of homelessness services visits were from women aged between 30 to 34 (7,013) and boys up to nine years old (7,189).
Across Australia, 28% of clients of homelessness services are First Nations Australians, reflecting continued disadvantage in the housing market.
