9 Homeless Australians Dying Each Day, Inquiry Hears

The average homeless person is living about 30 years less.

A homeless girl sleeps on the ground by a sign asking for food and clothing in Sydney, Australia, on Jan. 18, 2021. Jenny Evans/Getty Images

Around nine homeless Australians die each day from potentially avoidable causes and many can expect to live up to 30 years less than people with stable housing, a Senate committee has heard.

The claims were made by representatives of the Australian Alliance to End Homelessness during a hearing of the Select Committee on Intergenerational Housing Inequality in Canberra.

CEO David Pearson said Australian Institute of Health and Welfare research found around nine homeless Australians were dying every day from potentially avoidable causes.

Data from the same group also confirmed that more than 56 percent of deaths among people receiving homelessness support services were potentially avoidable.

“Homelessness is a killer,” Pearson said.

“Just one night of experiencing rough-sleeping homelessness, for example, can be catastrophic for your health.

“The international evidence has demonstrated that anyone experiencing rough sleeping homelessness can have a reduced life expectancy for up to 30 years than those of us with stable housing.”

Pearson said there had been a lot of political focus on young people entering the housing market, but argued attention should also be on the generation “dying 30 years younger than us.”

“In fact, it’s the generation that we’re losing, because our housing market is unaffordable and because we have failed to make investments in housing that’s needed to support people, we have a huge intergenerational inequity for that group of people,” he said.

From Homelessness to PhD

Among those appearing before the committee was Gregory P Smith, an author, lecturer, CEO of Home Address Australia and director of the Australian Alliance to End Homelessness, who was homeless until the age of 44.

After being left at an orphanage as a child and spending much of his youth in out-of-home care, Smith struggled with trauma, addiction, and social isolation.

Smith drifted further from society and eventually spent around a decade camping in a New South Wales forest.

Finding himself malnourished, suffering mentally, and close to death, Smith said he decided to turn his fate around through education and leave substance use behind.

“I was uneducated, and to put it morally, I was a menace to society because I had no living skills,” he told the committee.

“I was frustrated, and I was angry because of the law, society, and the systems.

“What lived inside of me was as a result of trauma, complex trauma, intergenerational trauma, and recognising these is an important part of moving forward on any platform to solve this issue.”

Smith went on to complete higher education and earn a PhD.

He told the committee that society was losing out by not working harder to end homelessness.

“There are a lot of valuable citizens experiencing long-term homelessness that have a great potential to contribute to society in very meaningful ways,” he said.

“Rather than costing governments, we’re missing the opportunities to allow people to actually provide our economic growth and our economics to build, so by not addressing these issues, I truly believe that we’re enabling systemic issues to continue.

“The most important things that we can give any individual if we want them to succeed is hope and purpose. If we can give them hope, purpose, and then add some dignity to that, we start to develop a sense of value.”

Reducing Homelessness

The witnesses told the June 10 committee homelessness could be significantly reduced through the “housing first” approach, which prioritises getting people into permanent housing before addressing issues such as mental health, addiction, or unemployment.

They argued governments should invest in supportive housing that combines stable accommodation with wraparound services, including healthcare, counselling and social support, and improve data collection to better understand the scale of need and target resources effectively.

“We know what it takes to end homelessness—it’s housing and support,” Pearson said.

A compounding factor, according to Pearson, is a lack of timely reporting on homelessness numbers in Australia.

“What we don’t know in Australia is actually how many people are experiencing homelessness at any given point in time, and that is a pretty shocking state of affairs,” he said.

“Most countries that we like to compare ourselves to around the world, they do measure how much homelessness there is quite regularly.

“In Australia, we measure through the Census every five years, when that census data is released, it’s 19 months out of date.”

Pearson called for a “housing-first” approach, arguing research showed every homeless person housed could save governments $13,000 in costs associated with hospitals, crisis accommodation, and imprisonment in the homelessness cycle.

The committee also heard that a baby recently died in a tent, though circumstances remain under investigation.

“We see these things all the time in the homelessness space, of people who have increasing vulnerability,” he said.

The Political Take

Homelessness rates are increasing yearly in Australia, with government data showing 122,000 people were homeless on Census night, 2021, while around 280,000 people sought help from specialist services in 2023-24.

Each major party has taken different approaches to addressing Australia’s homelessness issues.

Labor has committed $10 billion to its Housing Australia fund, aiming to provide 40,000 social and affordable houses.

The party also says its changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing would create another 75,000 homes.

The Coalition’s approach to housing has been largely based around increasing housing supply through planning reform, infrastructure investment, and changes to migration settings. It has also proposed a $5 billion infrastructure fund to support 400,000 new builds.

One Nation has called for reduced migration, lowered taxes, bans on foreign ownership, alongside allowing superannuation to be used to purchase a home. It has also proposed making cheaper accommodation more readily available through private sector incentives.