Increase in Western Australians vulnerable to homelessness

Working the frontline of the cost-of-living crisis, financial counsellors are seeing firsthand the economy’s devastating impact on people’s housing stability.

WA’s largest collective of financial counsellors, the Financial Wellbeing Collective, of which Anglicare WA and Uniting WA are lead partners, has found that the rate of homelessness has doubled among its financial counselling clients in the last five years.

“Skyrocketing rents have pushed clients, particularly single people on a low-income, into shared housing and, even then, we hear stories of clients paying exceptionally high rates to rent a room,” Financial Wellbeing Collective General Manager Helena Jakupovic explained.

Anglicare WA’s 2024 Rental Affordability Snapshot, released in March, showed that across the state there was not a single property or even a room affordable to someone on Jobseeker or youth allowance.

The data showed there are 59 per cent fewer properties across the state than were available at the start of the pandemic. In Perth, the median weekly rental price has risen to $650, up 75 per cent since April 2020.

This is impacting homelessness rates, which has increased in WA, according to the 2021 Census. WA was only one of four states or territories (VIC, SA, WA, TAS) where the rate of homelessness increased between 2016 and 2021.

There is an 8 per cent increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness in WA, up by 724 people, reported in 2021. WA has the highest proportion of rough sleeping in Australia with almost a quarter of the total homelessness population in WA rough sleepers.

There is also an 8.9 per cent increase in couch surfing, a 53.1 per cent increase in the number of people staying in supported accommodation for the homeless, and 109.8 per cent increase in the number of people staying in temporary lodging, according to the Census.

Ms Jakupovic said any number over zero is too many when it comes to homelessness. “Every Western Australian deserves the right to stable, safe accommodation but with cost-of-living pressures and a housing crisis many in our community are becoming vulnerable to housing instability,” she said.

“To be seeing our client numbers of homelessness double in one of the wealthiest states in the country is simply not acceptable.”

Ms Jakupovic said housing availability and affordability will continue to have an enormous impact on the community. “With housing prices and rents continuing to rise, only more Western Australians are going to become vulnerable to homelessness,” she said.