Homelessness more than doubles in some parts of Victoria

A surging number of homeless people identified in Victoria has prompted a call for urgent investment in support and public housing, with the problem growing fastest in some regional areas.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics recorded 30,660 homeless people in Victoria on the night of the August 2021 census, which was a 24 per cent increase since 2016 and a jump almost five times the national average.

A public housing tower in Alfred Street, North Melbourne. Victoria’s public housing waiting list grew by 459 to a record high of 58,131 in March.Credit: Chris Hopkins

New analysis of that census data by the Council to Homeless Persons shows homelessness more than doubled in some parts of the state. The data includes people living on the street or in cars, in boarding houses, temporary accommodation or severely overcrowded dwellings.

Council to Homeless Persons CEO Deborah Di Natale said the data reflected a growing problem but also uncovered previously hidden cases because the census took place during a COVID-19 lockdown, when homeless people were offered emergency accommodation in hotels, making them easier to identify.

“These numbers are alarming,” Di Natale said. “On any given night, we’ve got 30,000 people who are experiencing homelessness and that figure is just not acceptable.”

The census data is almost two years old, but Di Natale said the problem had not improved, based on demand for her organisation’s frontline services and the growing public housing waiting list, which blew out to a record 58,131 applications in March.

The biggest increase in homelessness was in the electorate of South Barwon, which covers part of Geelong and the Surf Coast, where it jumped from 148 people in 2016 to 838 in 2021, driven by a 10-fold increase in people living in rooming and boarding houses, where bedrooms are rented out by individual residents.

Another four of the 10 fastest-growing electorates were regional: Eureka, in Ballarat (up 113 per cent); Bendigo East (107 per cent); Mildura (96 per cent); and Morwell (85 per cent).

“In regional Victoria ... property prices have gone up and the rental market is incredibly tight, so there just are no places to go,” Di Natale said. “People who would have previously been able to access a rental can’t and rather than sleeping rough, their only option is to go into a rooming house.”

Melton, in Melbourne’s outer west, had the second-fastest growth in homelessness, up 134 per cent to 398 people, with the number of people living in “severely crowded dwellings” growing from 61 to 254.

The Bureau of Statistics considers a dwelling “severely crowded” when four or more extra bedrooms would be needed to properly accommodate the people who live there. It considers these people homeless because they generally do not have adequate personal space or privacy.

Figures published online by Homes Victoria show 459 families joined the social housing waiting list in the first three months of this year, pushing it from an already record high of 57,672 applications to 58,131.

The Andrews government has promised to deliver 12,000 social and affordable homes through its $5.3 billion Big Housing Build program.

A government spokesperson said the program had completed or started building 7600 homes since it launched in 2020 and that more than 2000 households had moved into or were preparing to move into those homes.

But Di Natale said the state would need to build 6000 new social housing homes every year for the next decade to meet demand after decades of neglect.

She also called for the government to expand the successful From Homelessness to a Home program, which it launched during the pandemic to house rough sleepers in medium to long-term accommodation.

A government spokesperson said: “No one deserves to be homeless, and that’s why the Andrews Labor government is working closely with specialist agencies to support people who are experiencing or are at risk of homelessness.”

The number of people living in boarding or rooming houses in Victoria almost doubled over the past five years, from 4406 people in 2016 to 8599 in 2021, census data shows. Excluding boarding houses, the number of homeless people rose 10 per cent over the past five years.

Victoria’s rate of homelessness recorded in the 2021 census was 47 people per 10,000 residents, which was higher than all other jurisdictions except for the Northern Territory.

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