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The common trend across the nation was
the high levels of homelessness within the
inner city areas of Australia's capital cities.
Image: iStockphoto

Rates of homelessness vary widely across Australia, not only between states and territories but within them, according to eight new state and territory Counting the Homeless reports released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).

The reports were co-authored by Associate Professor David Mackenzie from Swinburne University and Associate Professor Chris Chamberlain from RMIT. They will provide valuable new information on homelessness in Australia, following the release of the federal government’s White Paper on homelessness in December 2008 which set forth the historic goal of halving homelessness by 2020.

According to Mackenzie, one pattern highlighted across the reports was the higher rates of homelessness found in the inner city areas of Australia’s capital cities.

“This is not because inner city areas are necessarily more socially disadvantaged, but because people there are more likely to be transient, having often come from other areas, and there are more homeless services closer to the inner city,” MacKenzie said.

“Over time, the concentration of services in the inner cities has been reduced and dispersed more broadly, but this trend needs to be continued and community infrastructure strengthened throughout metropolitan areas.”

In Melbourne, there were almost 15,000 homeless people in 2006. The rate of homelessness in the city centre was 129 per 10,000, dropping to 38 per 10,000 in the inner city ring and 28 per 10,000 in the outer suburbs.

Where there were almost 16,000 homeless people in Sydney in 2006, the rate of homelessness in inner Sydney was 133 per 10,000, while in the inner city ring it was 53 per 10,000, and in the outer suburbs it was 22 per 10,000.

And in Adelaide where there were 5,213 homeless people, the rate of homelessness in the inner city was 457 per 10,000 compared with 47 per 10,000 for Adelaide overall. The results for other capital cities were similar.

Outside cities, homelessness rates in northern Australia are very high. In the Kimberley region, for example, there were 1,870 homeless people at a rate of 638 people per 10,000. Mackenzie said these rates partly reflect issues of Indigenous transience and inadequate housing, although non-Indigenous Australians also experience higher rates of homelessness in remote locations.

The reports also showed there to be four main differences in homelessness between the states and territories:

• The Australian Capital Territory (1,364), New South Wales (27,374) and Victoria (20,511): in these jurisdictions there were 42 homeless people per 10,000 population.
• South Australia (7962) and Tasmania (2,507) both had a homelessness rate of 53 people per 10,000.
• Queensland (26,782) and Western Australia (13,391) had a rate of 68 to 69 homeless people per 10,000.
• The Northern Territory (4,785) had 248 homeless people per 10,000.

“It is important to express homelessness as a rate per 10,000 in order to highlight differences between one area and another,” Chamberlain said.

MacKenzie and Chamberlain have worked closely together for nearly 20 years on researching homelessness in Australia. The production of homelessness statistics involved a close collaboration between the university researchers, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.