ISSUE NO. 2: Why we care about homelessness

"Why Should I Care About Homelessness? " You ask? It Is Not What or Who You Think It Is! - A Clinical Psychologist's Point of View

Most of us carry the same picture: A man on a footpath, a sleeping bag, a cardboard sign, maybe even a trolley full of stuff wrapped in plastic bags. We assume two things about him almost without noticing: That this is what homelessness looks like, and that somewhere along the way he must have done something to end up there. We might even quietly think to ourselves, "This could never happen to me" or "This is not my problem" and we may turn away in fear, disgust, guilt and shame.

Those assumptions are wrong, and the gap between what we imagine and what is actually happening is exactly where many people facing homelessness slip out of sight.

Let's start with the real picture

On Census night in Australia in 2021, around 122,500 people had no safe, stable home, and only about 6% of them were sleeping rough. The rest were in places we never think to count. Severely crowded flats. Boarding houses. Crisis accommodation. A car in a quiet street. A friend's couch, again, for the third month running.

This is sometimes called hidden homelessness, because it does not match the image, so we walk straight past it. [1] This is why it is closer to you than you think.

Among people who had turned to the Salvation Army for emergency relief, nearly two in five private renters and more than a third of mortgage holders reported couch surfing or sleeping in their car in the past year because they had run out of money. [10] These were people renting or paying a mortgage when the ground gave way, people with the ordinary trappings of a settled life, who reached the point where it stopped adding up. I have seen this in some of the people I work with too.

Working. Put together. Still showing up where they are expected to show up. Passing people in the street, standing beside colleagues, holding themselves in a way that gives no hint of where they slept the night before.

And because the majority do not look like the common stereotype, they often struggle to have the severity of their circumstances noticed, let alone taken seriously.

You would not pick them on the street. That is the whole point.

So how does it actually happen, you ask? Not in one step.

Homelessness is rarely a single event, it is a chain, and each link pulls the next. The most common reasons people reach out for help include family and domestic violence, eviction, financial difficulty, and the plain impossibility of affording rent. [7] People who have experienced family and domestic violence make up more than four in ten homelessness service clients, and among those clients, nine in ten are women and children. [3] Mental health difficulties are also woven through a great deal of it. [2]

Frontline hardship data shows the same overlapping pattern, with financial strain, family violence, health problems, and isolation rarely sitting in separate boxes. [10] But the order changes from person to person, and the door someone comes in by is rarely the one you would guess.

Across my work, I see the same thing in different forms. A workplace injury reduces income, and suddenly a household that was just managing is not managing anymore. A chronic illness becomes harder to treat because the treatment costs too much. A mental health condition worsens because someone is spending all their energy surviving. A relationship under financial strain becomes unsafe, or an unsafe relationship becomes impossible to leave because there is nowhere affordable to go.

None of these pathways is neat. They overlap. They feed each other. And by the time housing falls away, people outside the situation often see only the final point in the chain.

Why health and mental health (care) matter

A chronic illness or mental health condition often needs treatment, and treatment costs money, time, transport, and enough stability to keep showing up. When people cannot access that care, symptoms can worsen, work capacity can shrink, and income can fall further. Then comes Centrelink, disability support, the NDIS, or some other system that needs current medical evidence, specialist reports, and functional information to document how unwell a person is. [11][9]

For someone already out of work, unwell, and financially depleted, even getting that paperwork together becomes another barrier. Being too unwell to work can be the very thing that blocks you from assembling the evidence that shows you are too unwell to work.

The same hardship data bears this out: among people accessing emergency relief, well over half could not afford to see a doctor, dentist or optometrist, nearly half could not afford prescription medication, and more than four in ten could not afford mental health or counselling support. [10]

People fall through that gap and land in an overcrowded house, or back at a relative's, or on the couch circuit, while the system files them under not trying hard enough.

A system with one too many gaps?

And that's where the system can fail people facing homelessness twice: Once on the way in, with safety nets that can replace only part of an income and taper over time, so a setback becomes a crisis faster than anyone expects. And again on the way out.

When a person finally claws back enough stability to earn a little, income thresholds and program rules can start reducing or withdrawing support before they are actually stable, on a financial trigger rather than a readiness one.

For someone who is generally healthy and steady on their feet with little to no mental health difficulties, that rather quick transition might work. But for someone carrying trauma, having the ground pulled before they are psychologically ready is destabilising in itself, and it can send them straight back down. Add tenancy databases, arrears records, and a history of instability that follow someone into the next rental application, [8] and you have a system that can inadvertently hinder the climb instead of supporting it.

And yet, we look at the person at the bottom of the pit trying and unable to climb back out and call it a character flaw.

Housing and Rental Crisis - We hear you loud and clear!

Underneath all of this is a housing market that has stopped working for ordinary people.

The Gold Coast is now the most expensive place to rent in the country, with a median around $900 (AUD) per week, higher than even Sydney (!), and with a rental vacancy rate below 1%. [6]

People are priced out of suburbs they have lived in for years and pushed further and further from work, school, and the people who steady them. A large part of why so many cannot buy, and stay stuck competing for those rentals, is that our tax settings have long rewarded property investment over people who just want somewhere to live.

The 2026 budget proposed reforms to that, winding back negative gearing and the capital gains discount from 2027, [4] and economic modelling suggests it may take some heat out of prices over time. [5]

But these are long-horizon measures when people in our local communities need help right now.

Reshaping a market and building more homes plays out over years, and none of it helps the person whose lease ends in August.

Why does Riot + Bloom Collective care, you may ask?

Well, here is where this topic stops being abstract for me. I may not have experienced homelessness in the stereotypical way of sleeping rough, but I know what it is like to lose your home, to be one of the exact statistics that so many are facing now:

the child of a hardworking single parent, upper-middle class, faring pretty well all things considered, an unexpected work crisis outside my parent’s control, financial downfall, and ending up being forced out of the lovingly built home with a mortgage, living in government housing.

This is the reality many people in Australia are facing now. It happened to me when I was younger and let me tell you, the impact and aftermath of poverty is not something that leaves a person when the financial and housing crisis is over. You may end up spending what feels like a lifetime or two trying to rebuild that sense of safety, stability, and belonging - let alone rebuilding somewhere stable enough to feel like home.

For me, the Gold Coast became exactly that place. It's one of the classic stories: I came to Australia during a university break on a work and travel visa and with no intention of staying, fell in love with this beautiful country and its wonderful people, decided to stay for "a" semester abroad, and have called the Goldie's central-to-southern beach suburbs my home since, fourteen years and counting. Longer than I ever lived in one place as a kid.

I finally felt that old and longed for feeling of roots that slowly take hold and create steadiness over time. And even I can feel that ground shifting now.

With the rent rises and the squeeze of the last few years, I have moved further inland, and the pressure has simply followed me there. If stability can wobble for someone like me, with the training, the income, and the support network I am fortunate to have, then it is not truly guaranteed for any of us. That is exactly why it matters, and why Riot + Bloom is backing this campaign.

The Vinnies CEO Sleepout raises money for St Vincent de Paul Society's homelessness services.

The practical things that catch people in the worst window of their lives, crisis accommodation, food, financial help, and a real path back to stable housing. On one of the coldest nights of the year, people spend it outside with a sleeping bag and a sheet of cardboard. One night is nothing next to what people without a home carry every day. But it raises real money, and it makes the rest of us look at something we are very practised at not seeing.

What can you do?

Facing problems this big can feel overwhelming and we may think, "I'm struggling as much as the next person and I'm no politician, so what am I supposed to do?".

You do not have to fix the whole system alone. But WE can all still do something. No matter how small, it counts.

Here are some things that you may be able to do to help break the cycle of homelessness:

• Share this blog with others and talk about it to help raise awareness. The myth survives on silence, so naming it is its own kind of help.

• Donate. Even a small amount funds real, practical support.

• Volunteer your time with a local service, if you have it to give.

• And the simplest one. Actually see people. Notice them, instead of looking through them.

• If you want to give to organisations doing this work, you might start with:

• St Vincent de Paul Society (Vinnies), who run the CEO Sleepout and the frontline services it funds.

• Orange Sky, for free laundry, showers, and a conversation for people sleeping rough.

• Mission Australia and The Salvation Army, for housing, crisis support, and longer-term programs.

• Your local Gold Coast services, who meet people closest to home.

• And if you would like to support my Vinnies CEO Sleepout campaign directly, you can support the Riot + Bloom Collective fundraiser here:

HELP RIOT+BLOOM MAKE A DIFFERENCE AND DONATE TO OUR VINNIES FUNDRAISER.

❤️‍🔥Together we riot. 🫂 Together we heal. 🌸Together we bloom. And sometimes that begins with making sure someone has a place to call home again.

Dr Nat

Dr Natalja Nabinger de Diaz

Founder | Clinical Psychologist

References

1. Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2023). Estimating homelessness: Census, 2021. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/housing/estimating-homelessness-census/latest-release

2. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2025). Health of people experiencing homelessness. https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-health/health-of-people-experiencing-homelessness

3. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2026). Family, domestic and sexual violence: Housing. https://www.aihw.gov.au/family-domestic-and-sexual-violence/responses-and-outcomes/housing

4. Australian Taxation Office. (2026). Tax reform: Boosting home ownership, reforming negative gearing and capital gains tax. https://www.ato.gov.au/about-ato/new-legislation/in-detail/individuals/tax-reform-boosting-home-ownership-reforming-negative-gearing-and-capital-gains-tax

5. Commonwealth Bank of Australia. (2026). 2026 budget: Updated housing outlook. https://www.commbank.com.au/articles/newsroom/2026/05/2026-budget-updated-housing-outlook.html

6. Domain. (2026). Sydney rents plateau as Gold Coast becomes Australia's most expensive rental market. https://www.domain.com.au/news/sydney-rents-plateau-as-gold-coast-becomes-australias-most-expensive-rental-market-1506661/

7. Homelessness Australia. (2025). Scale of domestic and family violence's role in homelessness revealed: World Homeless Day. https://homelessnessaustralia.org.au/scale-of-domestic-and-family-violences-role-in-homelessness-revealed-world-homeless-day/

8. The impacts of the threat of eviction or actual eviction on private renters in two Australian states. (2025). International Journal of Housing Policy. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19491247.2025.2482206

9. National Disability Insurance Scheme. (2026). Gathering evidence. https://www.ndis.gov.au/applying-access-ndis/how-apply/information-support-your-request

10. Russell, C., Verrelli, S., & Taylor, E. (2025). The Red Shield Report 2025: Struggling to survive. The Salvation Army.

11. Services Australia. (2026). Medical evidence for Disability Support Pension. https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/medical-evidence-for-disability-support-pension

12. WorkSafe Queensland. (2026). Weekly compensation. https://www.worksafe.qld.gov.au/claims-and-insurance/compensation-claims/payments-and-support/weekly-compensation

Please Note: Riot + Bloom Collective shares general educational, advocacy and reflective content. It does not provide clinical care or advice. Clinical services are offered only through SANVT. Psychology.