The main driver of homelessness in Australia is housing costs – post-COVID rents, house prices and interest rates are all much higher. To house everyone, the housing system needs a major overhaul.
Homeless includes rough sleeping, those requiring urgent housing support and informal, hidden homelessness.
Travers Lewis | Shutterstock
More people than expected needed help, and the states have found stable housing for less than a third of rough sleepers who were put up in hotels. A hands-off federal government simply isn’t helping.
Australia has housed rough sleepers during the pandemic, unlike the US, but it’s a temporary fix.
Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich/EPA/AAP
Australia found shelter for more than 33,000 rough sleepers and other homeless people during the pandemic, but a coming surge in homelessness demands a comprehensive national housing strategy.
The number of people made homeless is forecast to increase massively by the end of the year.
PA
Providing a bed for the night in a car park for people sleeping rough just treats them as a charity case. There are better ways to tackle homelessness.
Accusations of ‘professional’ begging are misleading, intended to demonise those who beg as deceitful.
Tracey Nearmy/AAP Image
Last week seven people were arrested for being alleged members of a begging ‘syndicate’. Stories like this entrench public perceptions of the homeless as criminal.
In 2001, around half of homeless people were found in capital cities. Today it’s almost two-thirds.
Photographee.eu/Shutterstock
Homelessness in Australia is increasingly concentrated in the capital cities, where nearly two in every three people without a home are now found. That’s the finding of a study of the data since 2001.
It’s easy to be cynical about charity drives like the Vinnies CEO Sleepout. Are they just PR stunts or can they make a difference beyond fundraising? Our study shows they can, and they do.
Autistic people have an elevated risk of homelessness, according to a new study.
Governments have all but abandoned the commitments made a decade ago when Kevin Rudd launched a national campaign to reduce homelessness.
Dean Lewins/AAP
A decade after the launch of a national campaign against homelessness, the trends are all going the wrong way. A new annual report highlights what’s gone wrong and what must be done.
Tributes at Westminster station to a homeless man found dead.
Isabel Togoh/PA Wire