More services needed for homeless in remote areas

Updated August 09, 2013 13:48:10

Audio: Homelessness an issue in remote areas (ABC Rural)

The national peak body representing homelessness services says there's a need for more support for people living in remote areas.

Homelessness Australia says more than 105,000 people experience homelessness on any given night.

Policy officer Jennifer Clarke says the majority of homeless people are in Australia's major cities, but there is an over-representation of homeless people in very remote communities.

"It's quite a big problem in very remote areas of Australia because of Indigenous people living in very severely overcrowded housing," Ms Clarke said.

She says the definition of of homelessness is much broader than just people who are sleeping rough on the streets, with that group making up only a small percentage of homeless people.

"The big category, Australia wide, are people living in supported or temporary accommodation. The services that our organisation represents provide things like crisis accommodation or more long-term transitional housing.

"There are a lot of people sleeping on the couch, or living at someone else's house temporarily, and we count them as homeless."

Ms Clarke says people who find themselves homeless in regional areas include women and children who are escaping family violence, young people and people with mental illness.

She says people living on low-incomes are most at risk of becoming homeless.

"It maybe that some country towns have been affected by the housing boom, and so the cost of housing can be quite high. In areas where there aren't a lot of jobs that means that people are struggling to stay in those areas and are maybe faced with the choice of either being inadequately housed at home, or having to camp at somebody else's place in the city in order to get a job.

"Of course, in northern Australia, there's the FIFO (fly in, fly out) problem, that people are being driven out of whole towns by over-priced housing caused by workforces coming in temporarily from somewhere else."

Topics: homelessness, rural-youth, canberra-2600

First posted August 09, 2013 13:43:46