‘I can’t keep living like this’: a day on the frontline of Australia’s homelessness crisis

‘I’ve got to start rebuilding my life’ … Cameron has been on the public housing waitlist since he started sleeping rough in Melbourne over a year ago. Photograph: Christopher Hopkins/The Guardian

Cameron just wants somewhere safe to sleep. Crouching in an alley off Bourke Street in the centre of Melbourne, he speaks quickly and softly. It’s hot, but despite the February sun hitting the footpath at 36C, he has a puffer jacket with him.

He has started talking about how his relationship ended, but that’s not what he really wants to say. Really, he’s angry. He’s been on the public housing waitlist since he started rough sleeping. He wants off the street.

“There was a relationship breakdown, but that is just life itself,” he says. “I decided to go camping in the park and set up a tent. I didn’t realise how quickly time could pass me by. I realise 15 months have now passed. I’ve got to start rebuilding my life because I can’t keep living like this.”

Few people need to be told Australia is in the grips of a housing crisis. Private renters are facing a median cost of $31,252 a year to keep a roof over their heads, while a report last year found that of the 45,895 rental listings across the country, just four were affordable for someone on the jobseeker payment.

The problem is acute in Victoria, where the state Labor government has announced record-breaking $5.3bn funding for new social housing in recent years. Advocates argue it won’t touch the sides. Victoria still has the lowest proportion of social housing out of all states and territories and the public housing waitlist was 60,708 applications long in December.

At the last census, 30,660 people were recorded as sleeping rough, about five times the national average. The state’s experience demonstrates a national reality – that solving a problem stemming from decades of underinvestment can’t happen overnight.

In the meantime, people like Cameron are feeling the full force of the crisis.

“There are too many people living on the streets,” he says. “I see people walking around here with no shoes on and talking to themselves. It’s remarkable to see.

“The politicians should walk to this end of the street to see what’s going on, down here.”

You just have to hold on

At lunchtime, Westwood Place is busy. Next door, about 50 people are getting a free feed at the Salvation Army – today it’s pork carbonara. In the alley, friends laugh after someone spills ice-cream down his shirt; a man talking about Queen Elizabeth is chain-smoking and women are mingling. On the street, there is so much time. Boredom is another enemy that will bite you if you’re not looking.

A lot of people [who] we work with have lost trust in services and have been let down by people in their lives

Chelsea, outreach worker

Chelsea, an outreach worker with Launch Housing, one of Victoria’s biggest homelessness services, has come to see Cameron. She wants to know if he would like to spend a night or two in a hotel, offering some respite from the heat.

“I would hug you if it wasn’t unprofessional,” he tells her.

Chelsea and her colleague Jess are on their usual round. They are outreach workers with Launch and spend their working days in the CBD, checking on Melbourne’s homeless population and seeing if they can link them in with services.

Today it’s quiet – people are taking shelter from the heat. But on any given shift, they’ll talk to as many as 30 people. “A lot of people [who] we work with have lost trust in services and have been let down by people in their lives,” Chelsea says. “So showing up when you say you’re going to is important.”

Often they don’t even discuss housing. They might offer a coffee, a supermarket voucher or take people to a cafe. They see if anyone needs a phone or clothes – but never cash.

Today there are a few people out coal biting (slang for begging) and Jess tells a story about watching a woman offer $20 in cash with the condition the person “didn’t spend it on drugs”. Despite the housing crisis, homelessness still has so much stigma.

The Victorian government says it is “housing as many people as possible”. A spokesperson for Homes Victoria, the agency responsible for the state’s “Big Housing Build”, says more than 7,000 households moved into social housing last year, “an increase of 29% from the previous year”.

The headline figures are impressive. But the situation for those working on the ground appears to be different. Jess says she’s worked in homelessness services for more than five years and has only had two clients enter public housing. One was this morning. The other was an Indigenous Australian man who, after languishing on the waiting list for years, died within 12 months of living in his new home.

She explains they have some clients who have been living rough for 20 years.

On the street today, Jess sees a woman she knows but doesn’t approach. The woman is angry. She was meant to move into public housing a month ago but was told it wasn’t ready, it needed renovation and she would have to wait.

There’s no timeframe for when she can move in. It’s the same message they tell Cameron – you just have to hold on.

Safe haven, for a few weeks

With social housing in short supply, a stay in emergency accommodation is a lifeline for many.

In an inner city suburb south of the CBD, on one of Melbourne’s busiest roads, sits the large Tudor-style house, fitted with a block of small brick apartments out the back.

Here, Launch runs one of the country’s only women’s crisis accommodations with a drug and alcohol harm-minimisation policy. The old house creaks as case workers and residents move about. No men are allowed on the property.

Among the residents is Ruby. Nine years ago, the now 35-year-old came to Australia seeking safety. She says she was arrested on the street in Malaysia and spent three nights in prison because she is trans. After her mother died in 2015, she fled.

“I tried to live in my country, but I cannot survive there,” Ruby says.

She was initially on a bridging visa and was able to work. But after a mix-up with her permanent residency application, she was moved on to another bridging visa that does not have work rights.

“So while I [waited] for the application to [be processed], I was working as a sex worker,” she says. “I didn’t have any choice … I needed to find money for my living, to pay for my food and my bills.”

She also started taking methamphetamine to stay awake at night.

Ruby moved from hotels to Airbnb and some weeks she slept in a different bed every night. After Covid lockdowns ended, Ruby started gambling and slowly the small safety net she had built up disappeared.

In October last year, she started sleeping on the street near Spencer Street Station. At first, she visited old clients or people she had known in the past to ask for help.

“No one picked up the call, no one opened the door. They ignored me,” she says.

Ruby was eating breakfast at one of the charity soup kitchens when they linked her in with Launch. She has now gone 73 days without drugs or gambling.

She has been at the crisis accommodation for 13 weeks but only has two to go.

Her situation shows that while support services can start to turn a person’s life around, is it near impossible to break the cycle of homelessness without sufficient housing.

The accommodation’s policy is to not vacate anyone into homelessness, but for women on visas with no working rights, and not enough beds to meet the demand, the options are very thin. So Ruby is standing on a precipice – it’s unclear if she will end up back on the streets.

In Malaysia she worked as a librarian – she wants to do the same here one day.

“The protection visa is very hard to get,” she says. “I’ve been waiting nine years, nine years. I will not give up.”

Families to the front, but never enough beds

It’s 9am in Collingwood in Melbourne’s inner north. There is already a line forming at one of Launch’s homelessness hubs. A mother and her young child have claimed a small slither of shade under a tree while they wait for the doors to open.

When people come in they are assessed and case workers try to match them with any accommodation available – a hotel for a few nights, a rooming house; they check to see if there are any crisis vacancies. Everything has its own criteria and there’s never enough.

Within 30 minutes they are at capacity, says Sarah, the acting service manager at Launch.

“That’s when we need to advise clients and set expectations that for anyone who presents after that, they [may] not be seen on that day.”

Sarah says they have about 30 people on the list for help for that day – even those people will be lucky to get a bed for longer than a few nights. Launch only gets about 25 to 30 vacancies each month for crisis accommodation.

It’s a high-stakes game of Tetris, trying to fit people into beds that just aren’t there – and on top of it, case workers are performing a stressful triaging act. First, families to the front. After that, they ask: what’s your age, gender and what’s your health like? Is there a couch you can sleep on that night?

Assessing one person can take over an hour and a half. There is no guarantee of a bed. “On a busy day, if we’ve got upwards of 25 people, we have to set those expectations early in the day,” Sarah says.

Today at Launch’s St Kilda East crisis accommodation facility, she says they’ve been able to process an advance rent payment for one couple who have secured a public housing tenancy. That’s two across the day, a success for the frontline workers.

“When I started in the role, my team kept saying, ‘Oh, there’s such a lack of resources and a lack of options available to our clients,’” she says. “And that was back in 2012. These conversations are still happening. It’s the system that we’re up against.”