I’m a 64-year-old finance professional … and I’m homeless

Australia’s housing crisis is not new. Headlines speak of rising rents and a shortage of affordable homes. Politicians offer plans and promises. Economists warn of market instability. And many Australians, when confronted with these stories, react with concern.

But too often, that concern stops short of real understanding. The crisis is not just an economic problem or a social issue. It is, for more than 122,000 people in Australia, a matter of survival. And that number is probably far higher. I know of a family living in a campervan at the back of a friend’s place who are not counted in these statistics. Their struggle, like so many others, is hidden from view. And then, of course, there is me.

More than 120,000 Australians are homeless.Credit: Andrew Quilty

This is not hyperbole. The difference between having a home and not having one can mean the difference between safety and danger, stability and chaos, life and death. Yet we continue to speak of housing as if it were a lifestyle choice or a market trend, rather than the essential foundation of human wellbeing that it is.

According to the Specialist Homelessness Services Collection, a person is considered homeless if they are living in non-conventional accommodation or sleeping rough. But the definition extends to someone staying in short-term or emergency accommodation due to a lack of other options. This includes couch-surfing with friends or family.

This definition doesn’t just describe statistics – it describes people. People like me. People who have worked hard, contributed to society, raised families, paid taxes and still find themselves without a place to call home. These are people whose lives quietly unravel behind closed doors or in borrowed spaces while the rest of the country looks away. Homelessness in Australia is not always visible, but its consequences are very real – and often fatal.

I am 64 years old. I am a qualified and experienced finance professional. And I am, by definition, homeless. At the time of writing, I am temporarily staying with friends. But that situation is about to run out. Next, I will fall into the most brutal category of homelessness. That means sleeping on the street. For someone with permanent nerve damage affecting my mobility and stability, that would not simply be unsafe – it would be unsurvivable.

This is what the housing crisis looks like when you strip away the politics and the euphemisms. It is not about affordability metrics or property values. It is about human beings – people like me – facing the very real possibility of death because they have nowhere to live.

Friends and family offer support in many ways – food, lifts, encouragement, care. But they cannot or do not offer what I most urgently need: a roof over my head. Not a permanent home. Just safety. Just shelter.

I’m on the priority waitlist for social housing. That label – “priority” – might suggest urgency. But even with that status, I’ve been told the wait is at least 18 months. That’s a long time when you’re teetering on the edge of a cliff, with no safety net below.

And if that fragile, temporary roof disappears? The streets are all that remain. For me, it’s not about discomfort or indignity. It’s about survival. Or not.

When we talk about housing as a human right, this is what it means. When we fail to uphold it, we are not just letting people fall through the cracks – we are forcing them to decide how they will meet their end: with dignity, or without it.

After exhausting every housing option, after submitting job application after job application, this may soon become my only choice: do I die with dignity, by my own hand, or do I allow circumstance to dictate a slow, degrading death in a public space?

In modern Australia, getting out of homelessness requires more than just luck or resilience. It requires something as mundane as electricity and internet access. Every job advertisement, every housing application, every obligation to maintain JobSeeker benefits – every thread of hope – is tied to a digital system. What was once a convenience has become a necessity. Without online access, you disappear.

We like to tell ourselves that Australia is a country of fairness, of mateship. We cling to the myth of the “fair go”. But that illusion is harder to maintain when people are dying on the streets.

We hold charity events such as the CEO Sleepout, when executives spend a single night outdoors, performative in their discomfort. Then they go home to warm beds and secure lives. They’ve “done their bit” – raised awareness, raised money. But awareness doesn’t stop a woman from being assaulted in her tent. Awareness doesn’t save a man from dying alone on a bench. When the cameras are gone and the PR machines go quiet, people are still homeless. People are still dying. And nothing changes.

The statistics are grim – but they still don’t tell the whole story. Homelessness shortens lives, exacerbates illness and kills through exposure, neglect, and violence. But perhaps most devastatingly, it drives people to suicide. The isolation, the fear, the hopelessness, the loss of dignity and the loss of agency – it becomes unbearable. These deaths may or may not be deliberate decisions. But they are always the result of a society that has failed.

This is the raw and ugly truth of homelessness in Australia today. And the question that remains for people like me is the most confronting one of all: How do I choose to die? What would you choose to do in my position?

John Coles is a finance professional.

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