Tom’s plan was to get a degree in Sydney. It went horribly wrong

After finishing high school, Chinese international student Tom considered university study in the United States. But, after seeing pictures of Australian beaches and the Opera House on social media, he enrolled in a degree in Sydney.

He did not realise that, within months of arriving, he would find himself homeless for the first time, trying to sleep in a park underneath the Harbour Bridge.

“I was so tired, but I cannot sleep because I was hungry and freezing,” Tom said.

Former international student Tom in Woolloomooloo.Credit: Sitthixay Ditthavong

That was in February 2024. After more than a year, he’s become accustomed to sleeping in parks.

Tom’s story is an increasingly common one, according to the city’s homelessness services, who say international students are increasingly finding themselves without a place to live.

Nurse unit manager at St Vincent’s Hospital’s homeless health service Erin Longbottom said international students were becoming the hidden face of homelessness.

“No one is talking about it,” she said.

They prefer to sleep in well-lit areas, she said, such as train stations or near public libraries.

“We have, at times, a build up of people in car parks where they can charge their electric bikes as that’s where they work [doing] food delivery,” she said.

For Tom – whose name has been changed because he has told his family back home he is renting an apartment – his road to homelessness was typical of many international students.

After a sheltered childhood, he arrived in Sydney aged 20 and began smoking cigarettes, drinking, gambling and taking illicit drugs.

“As I make bad friends, yeah, that’s why they teach me to do every the bad thing,” he says.

He paid $290 a week to live in a share house in Auburn but started a relationship with a lawyer in Kirribilli and moved in. The relationship ended and he had to move out. Then, he lost a lot of money gambling – something he said was common among international students.

“They lost all the money their parents gave to them to pay for school, pay for rent, everything.”

Tom showers every day but sleeps in parks around the inner city. He had a stint doing UberEats delivery before someone stole the battery from his e-bike.

Sean Stimson, a senior solicitor at the Redfern Legal Centre’s International Student Legal Service, said there had been a spike in homelessness over the past 18 months as international students faced steep rent hikes.

“What we saw and continue to see is that landlords are increasing their rent significantly. There were evictions associated with that,” he said.

International education is one of Australia’s biggest exports. It was worth $51 billion to the Australian economy in 2024.

Stimson said, while international students benefited Australia’s economy, there were few safeguards to stop them falling into homelessness.

“When it works, it works, when it doesn’t work, it really doesn’t work,” he said.

“The dark side can be quite dark. We’re aware of students who are clients of ours who can’t meet the increase in rent and are asked to participate in sexual favours.”

Under visa rules, international students must have about $29,000 in their bank accounts when they arrive in Australia. But Stimson said they can quickly burn through that cash.

Across NSW, 2192 people were sleeping rough in the 2025 street count – an eight per cent increase on the previous year. A government spokeswoman said demographic data, including if they were a student, was not collected.

“This is done to protect people’s privacy, safety, and dignity during what is often a deeply vulnerable time,” she said.

Research conducted by UTS professor Alan Morris last year found, while there was a perception that international students in Australia were part of a global middle class, at least 25 per cent were in a very financially precarious situation. A small percentage reported “hot bedding” – where sleeping in a bed is shared in shifts.

University of Sydney social sciences professor Gaby Ramia has called for greater policy action to help support international students, particularly citing their vulnerability during the pandemic.

“They are on their own in such a crisis, figuratively, and, in many cases, they are literally lonely; and lonely more often than most in our society,” Ramia said, noting international students constitute about one-third of enrolments, but face disadvantages not recognised, or dismissed by policymakers.

Universities Australia chair Professor Carolyn Evans said, while Australia received enormous benefits from international students, there needed to be some reciprocity.

“The onus absolutely is in part on universities, but it is not exclusively on universities,” she said.

“There’s a whole issue of supply side with housing, which requires government input to say we’re very happy to support that. But we also sometimes see things like local councils blocking universities who have been prepared to build substantial additional student accommodation.”

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said it was important that international students had enough money to be able to support themselves while they are studying, noting this was why the savings threshold was increased to $29,710 last year.

He said the responsibility for regulating accommodation arrangements sat with the states.

“Universities have also drawn significant revenue from international students, however university controlled, owned or managed student accommodation has not kept pace,” he added.

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