As the youth homelessness crisis continues to impact hundreds across Melbourne’s west, Prealene Khera reports on why young people are being pushed to the margins, and the solutions that lie ahead.
A few days after Rosie George* turned 17, she left her house to escape family violence.
Between couch surfing and seeking shelter in refuges, Rosie was left untethered and deprived of a sanctuary.
While most people her age focus on acing their exams, Rosie, who had to drop out of school, was busy contending with being homeless.
Like Rosie, this absence of safe housing is felt by a significant number of young people across Melbourne’s western suburbs, whose lives are slipping through the cracks due to the youth homelessness crisis, according to youth homelessness service provider Melbourne City Mission’s (MCM) policy, advocacy and government relations head Shorna Moore.
“Every year, thousands of children and young people come to MCM alone and in crisis and many of them are coming to the CBD from Melbourne’s western suburbs,” she said.
MCM’s 2024 Victorian Youth Homelessness Snapshot found that four in five young people faced family violence prior to becoming homeless, with more than half of them being known to the child protection system.
“They are often escaping violence in their family homes, and are in a constant state of distress and fear, not sure where they are going to sleep the night or what they are going to be forced to do in order to find somewhere to stay,” Ms Moore said.
MCM is the largest service provider of its kind in the state, and includes multiple youth refuges and dedicated crisis and transitional accommodation for young people in Melbourne’s west.
However, Ms Moore said, it couldn’t meet the high demand.
“Our refuges are full, every night, and there are so many young people who are told there just isn’t a bed for them,” she said.
“As a result, they are forced into unimaginable situations – often having to choose between sleeping outside by the river or a park, returning to a violent home or being forced into intimate relationships with older people.”
Many children and young people from Melbourne’s west are forced to leave their local area for the CBD in the hope of finding crisis accommodation or a refuge bed, Ms Moore added.
“This often takes them further away from their education and the limited social and community support they rely on, exposing them to a whole raft of new safety and risk factors,” she said.
“They are experiencing very high levels of harm on a daily basis including physical and sexual violence.
“Without a home, these children and young people are forced into situations that most adults would never comprehend experiencing.”
MCM’s data shows that half of the young people supported by the organisation in 2024 had been admitted to a hospital emergency department for a serious mental health crisis (often several times), and two-thirds of them had been discharged from hospital back into homelessness.
Nearly 55 per cent of young people had also experienced self-harm, suicide ideation or suicide attempts.
As per the report, two in three young people had been homeless for more than two years and one in three has experienced homelessness for five years or more.
“That is particularly concerning when we’re talking about 15-24 year-olds, who have likely spent their adolescence growing up in homelessness,” Ms Moore said.
The issue is further exacerbated due to the lack of dedicated youth housing.
“[It] is so out of step with the fact that 19-24-year-olds experience the highest rate of homelessness of any age group in Australia,” Ms Moore said.
“Currently, there are very limited dedicated youth tenancies built into our housing system. A 17-year-old who has a very low earning capacity and is unlikely to have any rental history, is competing with adults for the same properties.”
But with the federal election looming, MCM and 170 other organisations in the field have formed a first-of-its-kind coalition urging all contesting parties to deliver much-needed relief.
Under the banner of the ‘Home Time’ campaign, the coalition aims to ensure every young person has a safe place to build their life.
“[This] campaign is significant, for many young people it means hope,” Ms Moore said.
As the sector’s national peak body, Homelessness Australia has also thrown its weight behind the campaign.
According to its chief executive Kate Colvin, Home Time is primarily pushing for the creation of a national target of 15,000 tenancies with support for young people, and removal of financial barriers that discriminate against young people trying to access community housing.
“As we head into an election, we need strong commitments from all sides of politics to fix youth housing,” she said.
Ms Colvin believes resolving the youth homelessness crisis depends on all parties coming to the table.
“With the Home Time campaign we’ve been really successful already but we just need to continue that work to get all the pieces of the puzzle in the right place and fix what we haven’t fixed yet,” she said.
“It’s something that can be fixed relatively quickly if governments make the decisions that they need to make to fix it – it’s a choice.
“We certainly hope that they choose to act on this problem because it would make a life changing difference to young people.”
It’s a difference Rosie has felt first-hand, but it’s taken four years of being in the system.
Through a youth housing program, she’s now living independently in her own self-contained one bedroom unit.
“I used to be in straight up survival mode but now it feels like I’m finally able to relax and I can finally unpack,” Rosie said.
“It’s given me a different sense of safety, I feel safe even when I’m outside of my home.
“Everyone deserves to have that kind of security.”
Details: www.hometime.org.au/
*name has been changed for safety reasons
