It’s Homelessness Week 2024.
The Hon. Clare O’Neill launched Homelessness Week this week for Homelessness Australia, the national peak body for homelessness in Australia. She emphasised the significance of her new role, as Federal Minister for Housing, Minister for Homelessness.
“Housing and homelessness are critical areas. We face a housing supply crisis, a housing affordability crisis, and a housing construction crisis. These issues are not just about infrastructure; housing is the foundation of life for every citizen. The current crisis affects the legitimate expectations of young people and highlights the disparities in wealth distribution. Addressing homelessness will be a pivotal part of my work in this portfolio.”
Clare O’Neill, Federal Minister for Housing, Minister for Homelessness
“The current crisis we are experiencing in this country is feeding into the homeless in this country. There is no distinction between the big problems we are having in the commercial market and the people experiencing homelessness.”
“All of the workers that I have spoken to about this issue, they have advised that they are seeing people coming into homelessness services who would never have come through the door 10 years ago.”
Anne Hollonds, Australian National Children’s Commissioner was also a keynote speaker at the launch of Homelessness Week.
“We’ve all enjoyed seeing Australia’s medal tally in the 2024 Olympics. But, on child wellbeing, we rank a low 32nd out of 38 OECD countries on child wellbeing, right near the bottom. And, that’s just one indicator that we’re failing on when it comes to children’s policy.”
“We saw last week, the Productivity Commission saying that we’re going backwards on key indicators for children. We saw the Mission Australia Survey last week showing that not only are there high rates of homelessness, but two out of five young people had missed out on the basics such as housing, food, clothing, school and transport. The research today shows extraordinary numbers of children homeless, including unaccompanied children seeking help, but not getting the help that they need.”
Anne Hollonds, Australian National Children’s Commissioner
“Poverty is a key part of this story, along with other complex needs, like mental health issues, disabilities, learning problems and of course child maltreatment. Stable housing is a core anchor point from which everything to meet the needs of children hangs. As National Children’s Commissioner, my focus is on the human rights of children and young people. Housing is a human right of children under Article 27 of the Convention of the Rights of the Child, which Australia signed in 1990.”
“When asked about what ‘home’ means, children will often talk about the concept of home – stability and security of their most important relationships, especially in the family. This is where safe and stable housing comes in. It is the foundation for the conditions that enable the child to get their needs met, especially through family relationships and through the local community that they’re living in – friends and teachers at school, and community activities, like sport. In contrast, the transient and marginalised life that homelessness brings, serves to rob the child not only of a roof over their head, the stable relationships that they need for their health, learning development and wellbeing.”
“Domestic family and sexual violence (DFSV) plays a key role in homelessness. As we now understand, it is much more prevalent than we first thought. Unfortunately, children as victim survivors of DFSV have largely been overlooked in child policy, despite the fact that the groundbreaking Australian Child Maltreatment Study showed that DFSV is the most common form of child maltreatment and it usually goes together with other forms of child maltreatment. Over 62 per cent of Australians have suffered one or more form of child maltreatment, much more than we thought.”
Discover more about Homelessness Week here.
And, read our most recent blog post on Homelessness Week here.
