Report on Government Services 2025

Government and non‑government specialist homelessness services deliver a range of services to clients – including supported accommodation, counselling, advocacy, links to housing, health, education and employment services, outreach support, brokerage and meals services, and financial and employment assistance.

Accessing homelessness services in Australia

Systems for the assessment, intake, referral and ongoing case management of specialist homelessness services clients vary across states and territories, ranging from agency-based to centralised management models. This variation may affect data comparability for specific performance indicators. Three broad summary categories are identified here – table 19.1 summarises the intake and referral systems used in each jurisdiction and identifies the category with which they most closely align.

• Community sector funding and support – Assessment of client needs and intake into services is managed by individual specialist homelessness service providers in line with state or territory policies. Referral to other service providers is made if clients’ needs are not able to be met by the initial provider. These systems may be supported by a coordinating service that links clients to local specialist homelessness service providers. Coordinating services may also make an initial assessment of clients’ needs (but do not provide homelessness services directly).
• Central information management – Assessment of client needs, intake and referral is managed by any specialist homelessness service provider using state or territory central information management tools. The central information management system supports the identification of appropriate services for the client and indicates the availability/vacancy of those services across specialist homelessness service providers. Client information may be shared between providers upon referral (with client consent).
• Central intake – Assessment of client needs, intake and referral is managed by one or more ‘central intake’ agencies. Central intake agencies prioritise client access to services and, for specialist homelessness services, only refer clients as services and/or vacancies are available. Central information management tools may be used to share information between central intake agencies and specialist homelessness service providers.

a The category provided is the most closely aligned to the jurisdictions intake and referral system. Each state and territory’s intake and referral system has its own characteristics.

Source: State and territory governments.

From 1 July 2024, specialist homelessness services are funded and delivered under the National Agreement on Social Housing and Homelessness (NASHH) and related Partnership Agreements between the Australian Government and state and territory governments. These services were previously funded under the NHHA and related agreements.

Government funded specialist homelessness services are jointly funded by the Australian Government and state and territory governments via the homelessness component of NASHH funding from 1 July 2024, and previously via the homelessness component of NHHA funding. The homelessness component is matched equally between the Australian Government and state and territory governments.

State and territory governments are responsible for day-to-day delivery of services.

Direct expenditure on specialist homelessness services is undertaken by state and territory governments. Recurrent government expenditure on specialist homelessness services in 2023-24 was $1.5 billion (or $56.44 per person in the population; table 19A.1) – 96.1% of which was provided to agencies to deliver specialist homelessness services. The remaining 3.9% was attributed to state and territory government administration costs (table 19A.1).

Population

Data on the prevalence of homelessness is sourced from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS 2023). Nationally in 2021, approximately 48.2 Australians per 10,000 people in the population were homeless on Census night – a decrease of 3.2% from 2016 (table 19A.2). The rate was higher for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (approximately 306.8 per 10 000 people, a decrease of 15% from 2016), and lower for people with disability (41.9 per 10 000, a decrease of 12.2%) (table 19A.3).

The number of older people experiencing homelessness increased by 30.4% between 2011 and 2021, reflecting the growing shortage of affordable housing and the ageing population (table 19A.4). The increase was greater for women (37.4%) than men (26.7%) (table 19A.4). Non-binary sex was included as a sex question response option in the 2021 Census. However, due to small numbers and data quality issues, data cannot be separately reported (ABS 2022).

According to the ABS definition of homelessness, there are six homeless operational groups (rates are provided in table 19A.2). The proportion of the homeless population in each group varies (ABS 2023) – in 2021, the majority of homeless people were ‘persons living in severely crowded dwellings’ (39.1%) (refer to sub‑section 19.4 for what constitutes ‘severely crowded’). Similar proportions of people experiencing homelessness were living in supported accommodation provided by specialist homelessness service providers (19.8%) and in boarding houses (18.1%). People staying temporarily in other households comprised 13.5% of homeless people. Only 6.2% of homeless people were in improvised dwellings, tents or sleepers out and 3.2% were in other temporary lodgings on Census night 2021 (table 19A.2).

Services

Specialist homelessness services provide a variety of services, ranging from general support and assistance to immediate crisis accommodation (AIHW 2024). In 2023-24, services were provided to 280,078 people (figure 19.1).