According to Professor and author Cameron Parsell, “The presence of homelessness constitutes evidence of societal failure. People who are homeless in wealthy, democratic societies with a welfare state powerfully demonstrate the numerous and interacting problems concerning how we organise society.”1
While homelessness is a complex issue with many contributing factors and potential solutions, it’s important that we understand why so many Australians are experiencing it—and why the numbers continue to rise. It’s not a problem we can afford to ignore.
I’m not going to focus on the data. We’ve seen the statistics, over and over. The cost-benefit analysis of ensuring Australians have access to affordable housing has been completed. It’s shown that providing people with affordable housing and support costs less than allowing them to remain homeless. The cost of homelessness to individuals, our communities and the economy is enormous—and it only increases the longer someone remains homeless.
For whatever reason, governments and communities have not been listening to the numbers. So, let’s talk about the human story.
people, not data
Picture a married couple. They’re homeowners, run a successful business and have three teenage sons in private school. The family is heavily active in their local AFL club, involved in their church and they love camping together. Yet they find themselves in a situation they never imagined. The marriage breaks down due to mental ill health, substance misuse and domestic violence. After a traumatic sequence of events, the family become homeless.
This experience was my experience. Thanks to the generosity of friends, my sons and I were able to couch surf. But we were separated for several weeks while staying in other people’s homes. Meanwhile, my husband found himself in various unstable environments, including boarding houses and crisis accommodation services.
Homelessness is just that: an experience of not having a home. It’s not simply about having a roof over your head.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics defines homelessness by this notion of “home”-lessness, not “roof”-lessness. It’s about lacking the core elements of a home as understood in Anglo-American contexts: a sense of security, stability, privacy, safety and control over one’s living space. Homelessness is, therefore, the absence of one or more of these fundamental things that make up “home”.2
It’s important to note that homelessness stems from systemic and structural issues like poverty, low income, and a lack of safe and affordable housing. While it is structural and systemic issues that have caused homelessness in Australia, some groups are more at risk. These include those who have experienced family and domestic violence, young people, children on care and protection orders, First Nations people, individuals leaving health or social care settings, and older Australians.
what comes to mind for you?
What do you picture when you think about homelessness? Maybe it’s the men and women sleeping rough on the streets of your city. Perhaps it’s the young people you see moving from place to place in groups, or the couples staying in tent cities in coastal towns. You might think of someone experiencing mental ill health or substance misuse, who talks to themself and sleeps in the park.
If we’re going to change the homelessness crisis in Australia, we need to stop thinking about people experiencing homelessness as “those people” or “others”. They are not “others”. They are your mum, your friend, your uncle, your daughter, your neighbour.
It’s your friend in her mid-50s who recently divorced and doesn’t have enough income or savings to rent or buy a home of her own and needs to live in shared accommodation. It’s your elderly aunt who can no longer afford to live independently. It’s the teenager who can’t live at home due to abuse. It’s your colleague who had to leave a violent relationship and is now in accommodation where she doesn’t feel safe or have any control over who visits. It’s the middle-aged teacher so overwhelmed by the stress of mortgage repayments who, out of shame, leaves his family and lives in his car. It’s the young families who can’t afford the few rentals available on the market. The young tradie who moved interstate for a fresh start, only to find accommodation is unaffordable and now sleeps in his ute. And yes, it’s also people struggling with mental ill health and substance misuse. But let’s not forget—those experiences happen to people who are housed too.
If we’re honest, homelessness has touched many of us in one way or another—perhaps now more than ever, as the cost of housing in Australia becomes increasingly unaffordable. If you haven’t experienced any of these things yourself, take a moment to think about the people around you who have. And consider how easily it could one day be your own story.
Many times, I’ve heard it said that people choose homelessness. If someone is choosing that, the most probable explanation is that the other choices they have access to are far worse. Think of the young person with abusive parents or the older man who can only afford a boarding house where his belongings are repeatedly stolen and he’s beaten up.
what is the way forward?
There are multiple solutions that have been presented, discussed and actioned across Australia and the globe. They include rental subsidies, more social housing, designing and building appropriate housing models like supportive housing and Housing First, investing in tenancy sustainment services, improving renters’ rights and local laws, and ensuring we have live data while working collaboratively to make homelessness brief, rare and non-recurring.
These are good solutions. But unless we change Australia’s dominant paradigm, how is there hope for lasting change?
If we don’t see housing as a basic human right for all Australians, how will we gain the momentum to change? If we don’t stop “othering” people, how can we ever create homes for everyone?
When the majority of Australians see housing as a human right for all—not just for people they think “deserve” it because they work hard, don’t take drugs or contribute to society—that’s when we will start to see lasting change.
That’s when people will support more funding for housing supply and support services. That’s when homes will stop being seen as a way to increase personal wealth and start being viewed as a way to build healthy communities. That’s when local councils, state and federal governments will write policies differently. That’s when banks and corporations will step up to help people stay in their homes.
will you change the paradigm?
Ending homelessness in Australia is possible. And while that might sound like a lofty dream to some, it’s already being achieved in other parts of the world, like Finland.3 Ending homelessness means creating a system where any experiences of homelessness are brief, rare and non-recurring.
My experience of homelessness was brief, rare and non-recurring. That was partly due to the fact that housing was more affordable and available back in 2011. But it was also because I had a community of people who supported me. Many others aren’t as fortunate. Their experiences of homelessness are long-lasting, life-threatening, debilitating and expensive—for them and for society.
For those who want to know the rest of my story: my three sons now have their own lives, homes and families. They’re successful in their careers, but more importantly, they’re successful at life. They care about justice. They care about people. And they never walk past someone sleeping rough on the street without offering some human interaction or practical support—because they know that it could have been them. It was them.
Let’s shift the paradigm. Let’s contribute to ending homelessness by making it brief, rare and non-recurring in our communities. Let’s stop seeing people as “different”, when we really are much the same.
It may seem overwhelming. But we can turn this around. There are solutions. But it needs to end with us.
- Cameron Parsell, Homelessness: A Critical Introduction. Polity Press, 2023. ↩︎
- www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/housing/estimating-homelessness-census/latest-release ↩︎
- www.homelesshub.ca/sites/default/files/SystemsResponses-ebook.pdf ↩︎
