In addition, people are facing rental pressure and being forced to live outside the municipality, away from jobs, services and their support networks.
We are facing a housing and homelessness crisis, a situation mirrored across Australia.
Shortage of affordable homes
Decades of under-investment in social and affordable housing combined with a growing population, rising housing costs, and the COVID-19 pandemic mean there are not enough affordable homes in the city.
Approximately 6000 affordable rental homes are needed to meet the current demand in the City of Melbourne. If we do nothing, it is estimated that this will quadruple to more than 23,000 by 2036.
The leading causes of homelessness and housing stress are complex. They include factors such as poverty and the lack of affordable housing, driven by family violence, rental stress, rising living costs, gender pay gap, poor health, trauma and job insecurity.
People sleeping rough and experiencing chronic homelessness
In 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 300 people slept rough in the central city every night.
During the pandemic, the Victorian Government, with the support of homelessness agencies, provided emergency hotel accommodation for people experiencing homelessness.
However, the shortage of suitable accommodation options means some people have returned to rough sleeping.
This visible homelessness, people sleeping on the streets, is just the tip of the iceberg in our homelessness crisis.
Many more women, children and families are part of the hidden homelessness problem – sleeping in their cars, on other people’s couches and in severely overcrowded or temporary accommodation.
In our municipality, homelessness rates have soared over the past 10 years. The 2016 ABS census recorded 1725 people as homeless in the City of Melbourne.
In Victoria, for every person sleeping on the street, there are another 21 people experiencing homelessness.