80% of Australian Homeless Families Denied Shelter at First

by Josie Raymond · 2010-07-22 17:00:00 UTC
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Is it at all comforting to know that other countries handle homelessness as badly — or worse — than the United States? No? Didn't think so.

In Australia, 80 percent of homeless families seeking accommodation for the first time are turned away from support services, according to a new report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. When it comes to couples without children, 75 percent are turned away. Single parents and their kids are denied services 69 percent of the time. The good news, which is hardly good news, is that single individuals in need for the first time are able to find a bed 50 percent of the time. (The country's five-year National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness apparently isn't working.)

So Australia is struggling with family homeless, just like the U.S., where the recession has pushed countless families into housing instability. This is the subgroup of the homeless that can be tied most closely to the recession. In the U.S. at least, the three most common causes of family homelessness are a lack of affordable housing options, poverty and unemployment. For individuals, on the other hand, the three most commonly cited causes are substance abuse, lack of affordable housing and mental illness.

Tragically, homeless families might not be families for long, especially if they can't find shelter, since legal definitions of child neglect often include "failure to provide adequate shelter."

While the U.S.'s new Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness aims to end veteran, chronic, family and youth homelessness in the next 10 years, officials in Australia are hoping to use this report to spur a governmental pledge to just halve homelessness by 2020.

I'd love to hear what Aussie commenters, or our very own Australian social worker/blogger Dominic Mapstone has to say. What's going on down under and what can be done about it?

Photo credit: Linh_rOm

Josie Raymond is a Change.org editor who has reported from the streets of the South Bronx, written for several magazines that folded (not her fault) and fixed thousands of typos.
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