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What is `homelessness`?

Homelessness may represent a single acute episode in a person’s life, or it may be a state entered and exited intermittently.²

Definitions of ‘homelessness’ are the subject of ongoing debate. While some focus on the standard or nature of a person’s accommodation,³ others focus on issues of safety and security. Different definitions reflect cultural perspectives and experiences of homelessness (e.g. notions of spiritual homelessness experienced by Indigenous Australians). Noting the subjectivity of people’s different experiences, Memmott et al refers to homelessness as:

a continuum of experience that incorporates the literal state of being ‘roofless’, as well as those states in which people are ‘at risk’ of becoming homeless. Central to where a person, group or family may exist along this continuum is the somewhat elusive concept of ‘home’.⁴

Other definitions take into account broader risks than merely being unhoused. For example, the Victorian Council to Homeless Persons describes a homeless person as one whom:

is without a conventional home and lacks the economic and social supports that a home normally affords. She/he is often cut off from the support of relatives and friends, she/he has few independent resources and often has no immediate means and, in some cases, little prospect of self-support.⁵

The definition provided in the Supported Accommodation Assistance Act 1994 (Cth) states: “… a person is homeless if, and only if, he or she has inadequate access to safe and secure housing”.⁶ ‘Inadequate access to safe and secure housing’ includes situations that might damage health, threaten safety, marginalise the person from amenities and the economic and social support the home normally offers, or adversely affect the adequacy, safety, security and affordability of housing. People living in accommodation provided under the Supported Accommodation Assistance Program (SAAP) are also considered ‘homeless’ by this definition.⁷

Before establishing the working definition to be used in this study, we will briefly elaborate on the aspects of homelessness that go beyond the question of merely being housed or not.

Homelessness within the home

Some definitions of homelessness (including that used in SAAP) focus not on the style or standard of accommodation but on the person’s level of safety, security and privacy.⁸ It may be argued, for example, that significant violence at home can render people ‘homeless within their home’.⁹ The ‘housed homeless’ include young people who are victims of abuse or neglect, and partners who are victims of domestic violence.¹⁰ It is difficult to assess the number of people living in such situations in NSW. As Chung et al reported:

87% of women who experience violence do not approach a crisis service for assistance; they stay at home or other accommodation (Keys Young, 1998). National SAAP data has shown that of the women who have left the family home after experiencing violence, approximately 30% (31.9%) return, and in remote areas, almost 60% (58.5%).¹¹

However, a report on the costs of domestic violence in Australia, drawing on data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Woman’s Safety Survey, estimate that a total of 327 500 women in Australia experienced some form of domestic violence in 2002–03. This represented 4.6% of women aged 18 or over.¹²

While clearly very disadvantaged, the ‘housed homeless’ will not be included within the working definition of homelessness for this project, provided later in this chapter. However, as a group at risk of homelessness, issues relevant to this group are discussed in this report.

Indigenous homelessness

In a study commissioned by the Commonwealth on homelessness in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) communities, Keys Young noted “that certain aspects of homelessness may be qualitatively different for ATSI people compared to other Australians who are homeless”.¹³ Drawing on Keys Young, Memmott et al identify the following five ‘working categories’ of homelessness experienced by Indigenous people.

• Living in public places: Indigenous ‘public place dwellers’ include people who live in public spaces and consider these places to be their home.¹⁴ For some, this is a relatively permanent arrangement while others may join this group from time to time. Some (but certainly not all) people may prefer living in the public space to housing alternatives. Memmott et al. observed that “this group may see recognition of their rights to public space and access to storage and ablution facilities as higher priorities than conventional accommodation”.¹⁵
• Transient homelessness: the transient homeless are those people who “experience temporary, intermittent and often cyclical patterns of homelessness due to transient and mobile lifestyles, living in temporary arrangements without secure tenure”.¹⁶ Memmott et al. argue that there is a degree of mobility within and between Indigenous communities that is “an expression of individual autonomy and reflects enduring social and cultural practices and values” and that this mobility should not be considered as ‘homeless’. However, they still consider mobility that “is problematic and expressive of instability and lack of support” as homelessness.¹⁷
• Spiritual homelessness: spiritual forms of homelessness may derive from: (a) separation from traditional land; (b) separation from family and kinship networks; or (c) a crisis of personal identity wherein one’s understanding or knowledge of how one relates to country, family and Indigenous identity systems is confused.¹⁸ In the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s (HREOC) Bringing Them Home report, members of the ‘Stolen Generation’ described the loss of cultural links with their Indigenous community; a strong sense of not belonging in either the Indigenous or non-Indigenous communities; and the inability to establish the links necessary to prove ownership of native title as a result of being separated from their traditional lands.¹⁹ While issues relating to spiritual homelessness are acknowledged, they are not the subject of this report.
• Overcrowding: overcrowding has been a recurring theme in studies of Indigenous homelessness.²⁰ In comparison to the national trend, Indigenous households tend to be larger and more complex, often made up of a number of family sub-groups.²¹ Memmott argues that the point at which an Indigenous household is considered ‘overcrowded’ may differ from other community standards, making it difficult to use definitions of homelessness that draw on “community standards for housing, residential mobility, household stress or insecurity”.²²
• Escaping unsafe or unstable family circumstances: while domestic violence is by no means unique to Indigenous communities, this has been a key trigger in particular for Indigenous women and young people leaving the home. For some the move is temporary or cyclical, with the literature and consultations for the current study noting a pattern for some people of moving back and forth from a violent family home.²³ Family breakdown and domestic violence has been identified as a key pathway to homelessness for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people,²⁴ and as such is discussed extensively in the current study.

Towards a working definition

As described above, homelessness is not just the lack of bricks and mortar. Some people may feel ‘housed’ living in public space while others are homeless within their homes. For others, homelessness is characterised by constant movement in and out of different housing. Coleman perhaps provides the most inclusive view of homelessness, describing it as “having no legitimacy or control over the spaces in which one lives”.²⁵

This report recognises the value of this encompassing definition and the hardship experienced by those who fall within it. However, the definition of homelessness used in this project is one articulated by Chamberlain and McKenzie and used by the ABS.²⁶ Recognising that ‘homelessness’ is a socially constructed concept that only makes sense in a given place and time, Chamberlain and McKenzie form a definition that takes account of the ‘minimum community standard’ of expected accommodation.²⁷ With this ‘standard’ in mind they identify three categories of homelessness:

• primary homelessness—people without conventional accommodation, such as those living on the streets, sleeping in parks, sheds or humpies, squatting in derelict buildings, or using cars or railway carriages for temporary shelter
• secondary homelessness—people who move frequently from one
• form of temporary shelter to another, including people using emergency accommodation (such as hostels for the homeless or night shelters); teenagers staying in youth refuges; women and children escaping domestic violence (staying in women’s refuges); people residing temporarily with other families (because they have no accommodation of their own) and those using boarding houses on an occasional or intermittent basis
• tertiary homelessness—people who live in boarding houses on a medium- to long-term basis. Residents of private boarding houses do not have a separate bedroom and living room; they do not have kitchen and bathroom facilities of their own; their accommodation is not self-contained; and they do not have security of tenure provided by a lease.²⁸

A fourth group of people not counted as ‘homeless’ by the ABS, but who are included in this report, are ‘marginal residents of caravan parks’. These are “people who were renting their caravan, but no one at the dwelling had full-time employment and all persons were at their ‘usual address’”.²⁹ Like boarding house residents, marginal residents of caravan parks (including families) rent a single space for eating, sleeping and cooking, and share communal bathroom facilities. Indeed, Chamberlain and Mackenzie observe, on the basis of data that they collated, that caravan parks are used as alternatives to boarding houses outside the capital cities.³⁰ Like boarding houses, caravan parks may be used as emergency accommodation for some people as well as longer term housing for people unable to enter, or excluded from, public housing or the private rental market. For this reason, Chamberlain and Mackenzie suggest that “for some policy purposes, marginal residents of caravan [parks] might be thought of as a part of the tertiary population”.³¹ Note that this definition generally excludes older retirees or ‘sea changers’ who have chosen to live in residential parks.

While the neat categorisation of people into these groupings enables us to provide some picture of the extent of homelessness in NSW, it masks the mobility of homeless people between these groups (e.g. from primary to secondary homelessness). For many, homelessness is characterised by constant movement between different types of accommodation: the street, homeless shelters, boarding houses. Alternatively, it may be from home to a refuge, a family member, or a caravan park.

However, the Chamberlain and MacKenzie definition has been selected for two reasons. First, there are comprehensive ABS statistics available on the basis of this definition. This enables us to report estimates of the extent of homelessness in NSW and provides some boundaries to the scope of this project. Second, this definition is utilised among service providers and those writing about homelessness in this State.