Housing crisis sparks surge in rough sleeper numbers

Posted on 10 Dec 2024

By Greg Thom, journalist, Institute of Community Directors Australia

More than 10,000 Australians are being added to the ranks of the nation’s homeless each month, according to a new report.

Australian Homelessness Monitor 2024 also revealed that the number of people sleeping rough has increased 22% over the past three years.

The report, released by Homelessness Australia, found Australia's worsening housing crisis was the main driver of homelessness.

The number of people citing housing affordability stress as the main reason they need homelessness services increased by 36% in the three years to 2023–24.

This demand has placed pressure on support services, who have found it increasingly difficult to secure housing, resulting in clients using services for longer.

Professor of Housing Research at UNSW Sydney Professor Hal Pawson, the report's lead author, said rental affordability stress has deepened to such a degree that more people were being forced into situations of severe instability and rough sleeping.

“Median rents have increased 51% since the covid-19 pandemic and there has been only a marginal expansion of social housing,” he said.

“Many support agencies are at a breaking point. Staff are operating in a completely clogged system. People exit support services into the same homelessness they were trying to escape.”

The research, which was conducted by the City Futures Research Centre at the University of NSW and the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland, was funded by the Lord Mayor's Charitable Foundation and the Council of Capital City Lord Mayors.

The report found:

the threat of homelessness has grown to increasingly threaten a wider range of Australians, including those who have jobs

the proportion of people accessing homelessness services who are employed increased from 10.9% to 15.3% over the five years to 2022-23

homelessness services have reported a 12% increase in monthly caseloads since 2019-2020

more than three-quarters of homelessness services (77%) found it significantly harder to secure housing for clients in mid-2024 compared to the previous year

Australians aged over 65 are the fastest growing age group to be affected by homelessness, with their number increasing by 31% over the past six years.

The report found that homelessness is a complex phenomenon and measuring its incidence and change over time presents challenges.

“However, the balance of Australian evidence laid out in this report clearly indicates that homelessness has recently escalated significantly,” the report concluded.

Researchers said this trend had likely been aggravated by the disruptive impacts of the covid pandemic in triggering a sustained period of low rental vacancy rates combined with “extraordinary” rental inflation.

The study found median rents across Australia surged by 51% between March 2020 and September 2024 – more than 29% above inflation.

“For lower income Australians in need of accommodation, market conditions have therefore become increasingly stressful, not only because of rapidly escalating rent prices, but also because of the sheer scarcity of available tenancies that has persisted during much of this time," it said.

“With the housing crisis forcing working families into homelessness, this should be a wake-up call for action.”

Homelessness Australia CEO Kate Colvin

Housing crisis — A safe and secure home is increasingly out of reach for many Australians.

The Commonwealth Government should formulate a National Housing and Homelessness Plan (NHHP) underpinned by legislation that articulates a clear ambition for all Australians to have a decent home.

The National Plan should include homelessness reduction targets to drive policy development.

The National Plan should initiate a review of the financial level and structure of Rent Assistance aimed at aimed at significantly decreasing housing stress for low-income tenants.

Australian governments should jointly commit to ensuring ongoing investment in social housing resulting in construction of around 10,000 dwellings per year.

The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council should be commissioned to identify social housing supply targets informed by a rigorous needs assessment.

Legislation to underpin the National Plan should include the creation of an advisory committee to inform Plan development and progress monitoring. Membership should include people with lived experience of precarious housing and homelessness, industry representatives and other external experts.

Australian governments should provide more permanent supportive housing for homeless people who do not have their needs met through the mainstream housing and support system.

State and territory governments should commit to reducing homelessness among populations identified as at high risk of homelessness and develop targets and action plans for groups such as children being discharged from out-of-home care, people leaving prisons people leaving mental health treatement.

The Commonwealth Government should co-operate with the states to increase homelessness service capacity, and commission research to monitor service capacity gaps.

Australian governments should commit to helping Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled housing and homelessness services meet the housing and support needs of First Nations people who are homeless or insecurely housed.

Governments should invest in capacity building to enable social housing and homelessness organisations to more systematically use and learn from service provision data, in a bid to facilitate evidence-informed social housing and homelessness service innovations.

The report concluded that unusually low tenancy turnover within the market had co-existed with a downturn in the number of newly built homes being put up for rent.

“Housing market conditions are producing homelessness.”

On the other side of the ledger, the report found the conditions that have placed so much pressure on low-income earners have created a “perfect storm” for homelessness services trying to help.

“Rising underlying need for assistance has been accompanied by declining scope to provide such help.”

This has resulted in agencies increasingly being forced to ration their scarce capacity by triaging applications and prioritising those already homeless rather than helping those at risk of homelessness.

The report is the latest in a string of research from the charity and not-for-profit sector highlighting the impact of the housing crisis on disadvantaged Australians.

A survey of more than 45,000 rental listings released by Anglicare revealed that not a single dwelling would be affordable for a young person scraping by on the $639 fortnightly Youth Allowance.

Rental Affordability Snapshot also showed that only three rentals – all of which were share houses – were deemed to be affordable for a person struggling to survive on the $762 fortnightly Jobseeker payment.

The report’s findings prompted a call by Anglicare for the federal government to return to directly building and providing housing.

A separate study by Mission Australia revealed that women aged over 55 are one of the nation's fastest growing groups experiencing homelessness, prompting the charity to launch a campaign calling for donations and community support to help older women find a safe home.

Homelessness Australia CEO Kate Colvin welcomed increases to rental assistance by federal and state governments but said more needed to be done to address what she described as a “homelessness emergency.”

“Homelessness is no longer confined to the most vulnerable,” she said.

“With the housing crisis forcing working families into homelessness, this should be a wake-up call for action.”

Colvin said funding for homelessness services had failed to keep pace with demand and the system was buckling under pressure as a result.

“Governments need to take immediate action and deliver an emergency homelessness investment so that when people reach out for homelessness support there is someone there to help them.

“We particularly need investment in homelessness prevention so we can stop people becoming homeless in the first place, as well as investment in world renowned Housing First programs to stop people cycling in and out of homelessness.”

The Australian Homelessness Monitor report backed calls by housing advocates for the collection of better data on homelessness and other aspects of the housing crisis, which it said was essential to inform properly grounded policymaking.

Researchers said the only way to reduce homelessness at the societal level and to prevent it in the future was by reducing poverty and expanding access to suitable and affordable accommodation.

“Just as the current situation has come about thanks to mistaken policy choices of the past, these are challenges that could be squarely addressed by course corrections today.”