Estimates of persons who were homeless or marginally housed as calculated from the Census of Population and Housing. Homelessness is not just the result of too few houses. Its causes are many and varied. Domestic violence, a shortage of affordable housing, unemployment, mental illness, family breakdown and drug and alcohol abuse all contribute to the level of homelessness in Australia FaHCSIA, Homelessness is not a choice.
Homelessness is one of the most potent examples of disadvantage in the community, and one of the most important markers of social exclusion Department of Human Services, Effective targeting of policies and services for reducing homelessness requires transparent, consistent and repeatable statistics. However, there are many dimensions to homelessness, and different statistics are needed for different purposes. Prevalence estimates of how many people experienced homelessness at a particular point-in-time allow society to judge the scale of homelessness, and can be used to report trends and to target services to prevent or ameliorate the circumstances of homelessness through knowing both the locations of the homeless and their characteristics.
While homelessness itself is not a characteristic that is directly collected in the Census of Population and Housing, estimates of the homeless population may be derived from the Census using analytical techniques based on both the characteristics observed in the Census and assumptions about the way people may respond to Census questions. This publication presents estimates of the prevalence of homelessness, and the characteristics and living arrangements of those likely to be homeless, on Census night and compares those estimates to Census night in , and Estimates are also provided for people whose living arrangements are close to the statistical boundary of homelessness, but who are not classified as homeless.
For more information see 'Other marginal housing groups'. For some groups of people, Census variables provide limited opportunity to estimate those likely to be homeless. Three key groups are: homeless youth; homeless people displaced due to domestic and family violence; and homeless Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
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Notwithstanding the limitations of the Census variables for the analysis of homelessness, the estimates presented in this publication have been compiled on a generally consistent basis so that they can be compared over time to track increases or decreases in homelessness. Any unavoidable inconsistencies in methodology are described and broadly quantified so that users can understand any limitations in comparisons over time.
