Homelessness Week is a reminder to think about what having a home means. Being homeless can mean more than not having a roof over your head and is not just one typical experience. Every Australian deserves to have a home.
Homelessness in Australia
Homelessness is not “rooflessness”. In fact, rough sleeping only makes up around 7% of homelessness in Victoria while the remainder is ‘hidden homelessness’, that is, people sleeping in crisis accommodation, rooming houses, insecure housing, overcrowded dwellings or couch surfing.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics defines someone as homeless if their current living arrangement:
- is in a dwelling that is inadequate; or
- has no tenure, or if their initial tenure is short and not extendable; or
- Does not allow them to have control of or, access to space for social relations.
On any given night, 116,000 people in Australia are experiencing homelessness.
Social housing in Australia has shrunk from 4.8 per cent of all homes in 2011 to 4.2 percent in 2021.
One in seven people coming to homelessness services in Australia are young people on their own.
In 2020-21, 114,000 people seeking homelessness services had to be turned away because of a lack of resources. That’s 20 per cent more than the year before.
Rents in Australia have increased by 9.1 per cent in capital cities and 10.8 per cent in regional areas in the past 12 months.
Homelessness in Bayside
Bayside is not unaffected by the growing issue of homelessness.
We’ve developed strong working partnerships with support agencies such as BayCISS, Monash Health, Launch Housing, Victoria Police and Community Connections, to work towards long term outcomes for those experiencing homelessness or rough sleeping in Bayside and surrounding Council areas.
If you are concerned about someone experiencing homelessness please call Council 9599 4444.
To end homelessness we need a plan
We need a national plan to end homelessness to properly address the issues driving rising homelessness, and to respond effectively so that homelessness is prevented where possible and quickly resolved when people do lose their home.
The new Federal Government has committed to developing a national housing and homelessness plan.
Get involved
This Homelessness Week, join us at Sandringham Library (8 Waltham St, Sandringham, 3191) while we watch Launch Housing‘s 25 minute documentary “The Road Home”, which depicts the stories and experiences of people moving from homelessness to hotels during the lockdown/isolation phase of the COVID-19 pandemic response in Melbourne.
Launch Housing made the documentary to chronicle a moment in time. It’s the story of how they turned the spotlight on homelessness, and responded to the vital lesson the virus taught us: that our own health is intimately connected to the health of the person next to us.
