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Homelessness Facts

Facts on Homelessness in Brisbane

 

The Australian Census Analytic Program (ACA) - Counting the Homeless 2006 breaks down homelessness into there categories:

  • Primary Homelessness - people without conventional accommodation, living on the streets, sleeping in parks, squatting in derelict buildings, or using cars or railway carriages for temporary shelter.
  • Secondary Homelessness - people frequently moving from one form of temporary shelter to another eg. emergency or transitional accommodation supported by Supported Accommodation Programs (SAAP), termporarily residing with other households and staying in boarding houses on a short term basis.
  • Tertiary Homelessness - people living in boarding houses medium - long term.  This is considered within the category of homelessness as the accommodation situation is below minimum standards of a self-contained flat.

·         The 2006 Census found a total of 7,996 homeless people in Brisbane with 2070 found in Inner City Brisbane.

 

·         The demographic with the largest growth of homelessness nationally in 2006 were families with children.  There was also an increase in the number of children under the age of 12 who were homeless.

 

·         The Public Space Liaison Team within Brisbane City Council began in March 2006 to conduct quarterly audits of Green Spaces in a 4km radius of the city centre. This represents only a segment of the homeless population who are sleeping rough in parks and bus shelters but does not include people in emergency accommodation, people sleeping on private property, or people staying with friends or family (often referred to as “couch surfing”). The March 2006 audit found a total of 102 individuals sleeping in Council green space. The audit in June found a total of 158 individuals sleeping in Council green space and the audit undertaken in September 2006 found a total of 102 individuals sleeping in Council green space.

 

·         A range of studies and reports show that people with mental health or substance abuse issues have particular difficulty in maintaining housing. Homelessness is not simply the absence of a house and a range of other issues impact on the ability of a person to maintain housing including difficulty in managing other life issues such as illness, domestic violence, a history of abuse and other issues that impact on their ability to sustain a tenancy.

 

·         People “sleeping rough” are concentrated in the city core but people in tertiary accommodation (40% in the 2006 census) are mainly in the suburbs. These people are often hard to identify and reach and are often not linked in to homelessness services.

 

·         Anecdotally, the two new homelessness hubs report that while numbers of single people is reasonably steady, the numbers of homeless families requiring assistance is rapidly increasing and families are quite hard to place in transitional housing. This may be attributable to low rental vacancy rates and increasing rental costs.