Perth's Homelessness Crisis: Dual-Income Families and Long-Term Workers Pushed onto Streets; WA's $91M Allocation Leaves Northern Suburbs Gap Unfilled

According to ABC News, at the end of September, a 45-person homeless camp along Memorial Drive in Rockingham, in Perth's south, was dispersed by authorities. Yet the move was only the tip of the iceberg in Western Australia's housing crisis — dual-income families, long-term workers, and elderly people relying on Centrelink benefits are being pushed into homelessness by high rents and the cost of living.

Salvation Army WA outreach team leader Brett McCaul has worked in the homelessness sector for six years. He told ABC News that the problem is not only that the number of people needing help is growing, but that the profile of those affected is diversifying.

"We really don't have enough resources to accommodate the sheer number of families we're seeing," McCaul said. "We frequently see many older people living in transitional accommodation services when they should really be in aged care."

"There's no longer any discrimination when it comes to homelessness. Anyone can be one or two steps away from it, at any time," he summed up.

Similar stories are playing out in Perth's north.

According to ABC News, the charity St Vincent de Paul Society (Vinnies WA) has seen demand at its Joondalup centre grow 36% over the past year, with part of the increase attributed to family and domestic violence issues as well as rising rents.

FIFO worker and Joondalup centre volunteer Josh Chinnery told ABC News: "Even people who have been working for 20 or 30 years are walking in now, on the verge of homelessness, because they can't afford the basic essentials of daily life."

According to City of Wanneroo data obtained by ABC News, about one-third of rough sleepers in the area during the last financial year slept in their own cars.

The WA state government allocated an additional 91 million Australian dollars for homelessness services in this year's state budget. According to ABC News, a spokesperson for Homelessness Minister Matthew Swinbourn said the Department of Communities was working with service providers and local governments to strengthen "place-based" responses and boost service delivery "where it is most needed."

However, according to ABC News, Vinnies WA service development manager Maija Hildebrand, who also heads the Joondalup-Wanneroo Ending Homelessness group, was blunt that these investments had not yet produced meaningful change on the ground.

"We have no crisis accommodation, we have no transitional, short-term or medium-term accommodation for adults over the age of 25," Hildebrand said. "We don't really have many options to help people get back on track."

She also told ABC News that the time between needing support and falling into homelessness is getting shorter.

Neil Clifford-Mills, 66, told ABC News he had lived in his car for a long time before moving to a park bench in Inglewood in February this year. He lives on Centrelink benefits while managing health issues, but after being unable to keep staying with friends, he could not find anywhere to live.

"The housing just isn't there," he said. "The workers who came to see me said, you know, there's really just nothing."

He also shared his experience on ABC Radio Perth 102.5. "A lot of people do want to help, but I don't think a lot of people have really thought that they could end up in that situation themselves," Clifford-Mills said. "If they thought about it more, things would be different."

Even when housing becomes available, it is not always suitable.

According to ABC News, Libby Sweeney has had no stable accommodation for about two and a half years after a breakdown in her relationship with her daughter. Her two dogs, Pablo and Yogi, have been with her through life on the streets, but have also limited her options, as not all accommodation allows pets.

"People have told me, you bring animals and you won't get accommodation, you really won't. If you get them fostered out, it would be much easier," Sweeney said. "They're like my children. Give them up? I'd rather sleep outside. That's not a negotiable option."

Both Hildebrand and McCaul told ABC News that stronger local support services would help address the problem, because such services could mobilise people's existing support networks rather than forcing them to travel to Perth's CBD.

From McCaul to Hildebrand, from Chinnery to Clifford-Mills, multiple service workers and people with lived experience described the same assessment to ABC News: homelessness in Perth is spreading from traditionally marginalised groups to dual-income families, long-term workers and retirees. Against the backdrop of the state government's additional 91 million Australian dollar budget, the northern suburbs still have no transitional or short-term accommodation for adults over the age of 25 — a structural gap that points to a visible shortfall between the state government's claimed "place-based" response and what frontline service workers are seeing on the ground.