What are the biggest challenges facing youth homelessness services?

According to experts and advocates in the homelessness space, Australia is experiencing a youth homelessness crisis that we’ve never seen before. As these rates soar, youth homelessness services are facing a wave of challenges and are struggling to meet the rising demand from people who require their support.

Some of the challenges facing youth homelessness services include misinformation, insufficient housing, economic challenges, and complex support needs. In this article we’ll explore these challenges and opportunities for improvement across local, state and national levels.

Youth homelessness context

On any given night, in Australia, it’s estimated that 28,000 young people experience homelessness.¹ In 2023-2024, it was reported that 43,226 children and young people (under 25 years) presented to a specialist homelessness service with half as many being turned away, simply due to under-resourcing.²

Causes of youth homelessness

The causes of youth homelessness in Australia vary. However, the leading causes are reported to include domestic and family violence, family conflict and breakdown, poverty, lack of available and affordable housing, unemployment, and mental health issues.³ Lack of adequate support for young people leaving out of home care is another contributing cause.

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the main reasons that youth sought assistance for homelessness in 2023-2024 were because of:³

The housing crisis (21%)
Inadequate dwelling conditions (16%)
Relationship or family breakdowns (14%).
Young people experiencing homelessness may also be experiencing a range of underlying social and health factors. For example, they might be experiencing substance abuse or mental health related issues.

Youth homelessness services

Youth homelessness services aid young people experiencing, or close to experiencing, homelessness. They may provide crisis or transitional accommodation, early intervention, and wrap around support like case management, brokerage, community outreach programs, skills development, and more.

Anglicare offers a range of flexible and tailored programs to support every young person’s individual needs. When working with vulnerable youth, we take a holistic approach to address their current needs and support them to achieve long-term housing. We also provide case management and advocacy.

Challenges facing youth homelessness services

As mentioned, some of the biggest challenges that face youth housing support services include misinformation, insufficient housing, economic challenges, and complex needs. Here’s a greater breakdown of these challenges.

Misinformation

Misinformation is one of the biggest challenges affecting services who provide essential support to young people experiencing homelessness. It can be fuelled by negative or inaccurate media reporting, stigma and shame, or genuine miseducation on the topic.

Misinformation can be harmful to youth homelessness providers. It can negatively affect policy and funding decisions, create misconceptions about young people (and their circumstances), and harm advocacy efforts.

Lack of available and affordable housing

We know that the lack of available and affordable housing in Australia places considerable pressure on people of all ages and backgrounds, but particularly young people. Research shows that private rentals are not affordable for young people.

Each year, Anglicare Southern Queensland releases a Rental Affordability Snapshot. In this research, we investigate the dire rental market in Southeast Queensland for those of all age groups and household incomes. In 2025, we found that of over 8,600 rental properties across Southeast Queensland, zero were affordable for someone receiving a youth allowance payment.⁴

When you consider the already dire availability of housing, in combination with low-income support, more young people are facing homelessness than we’ve experienced before. Service providers are unequivocally challenged by increasing demand from young people to access safe and stable housing.

Economic challenges and low income

At a time when young people should be focussed on their education or finding part time work, those who are experiencing homelessness are often left with little to no options in terms of creating and maintaining stable and sufficient income. Those who are employed can often only find themselves in casual or part-time positions, and due to their limited experience in the workplace, they’re often paid poorly. Thus, are unable to afford rent and basic living essentials.
When impacted by housing insecurity, many are confronted with difficult decisions. As the Lighthouse Foundation for Youth mention, young people may need to choose whether to “…pay for rent or buy food, continue their education or give up their dreams, work long hours in a low-paying job or face sleeping rough on the streets.”⁵
Economic challenges such as unemployment and low income also affect front line youth homelessness services as they increase the need for our services. Our services are already under-resourced and are struggling to meet the growing demand from young people. Furthermore, this is putting additional pressure on us to deliver programs that address the diverse range of needs in the community.

Complex needs

Did you know that almost half of young people presenting to a youth homelessness service reportedly experience mental health issues?²

Youth homelessness services support young people with a range of complex needs. This may include health problems, trauma and mental health concerns, as well substance abuse problems.

Homelessness is known to significantly increase mental health issues and trauma in young people. For instance, the daily struggle of finding food and shelter can increase stress and intensify mental health issues. If young people already have pre-existing health conditions, they’re likely to worsen if they’re experiencing homelessness. They may also be more vulnerable to violence, exploitation and substance abuse.

Some youth homelessness services support young people with complex needs. However, their symptoms may be exacerbated by the time they’re connected with a service. This can be especially challenging for the young people experiencing symptoms of complex health and mental health issues, but also for services as they are often under-equipped to provide specialist care to address these complex needs.

Insufficient funding

As demand for youth homelessness services increase, one of the biggest challenges for our industry is insufficient funding to meet this need. Without adequate funding, youth homelessness services:

Have fewer available resources (including factors such as bed count, staffing arrangements, basic living needs for young people, services, and programs); and
Are left to prioritise or turn away service users if there’s not enough support available. This issue can lead to emotional distress and burnout of frontline workers.⁶

Fragmented services

Fragmented services are services that are delivered in a poorly connected manner. Many services take a siloed approach to working with young people. This makes it difficult for youth to access seamless and connected support.

Because of this, there’s often gaps in the care needs of young people and homelessness services do not have access to their client’s full records. This can make it incredibly difficult to provide specialised care and may cause further distrust from young clients.

Other challenges

Amongst the extensive challenges that youth homelessness service providers face in Australia, here are some more examples of what they’re faced with:

Inadequate support to meet the needs of vulnerable subgroups. For example, young people with physical and intellectual disabilities, LGBTQIA+ youth, and youth with cultural differences.
Staffing model challenges
Regional support gaps which force vulnerable youth towards major cities.

Opportunities for improvement

Youth homelessness has lasting and damaging impacts on children and young people, their communities, and the Government. These include higher rates of health and wellbeing issues, suicide, psychosocial impacts, developmental issues, and exposure to violence and exploitation.

In addition to the detrimental impacts on those experiencing it, it can also affect the criminal justice system, emergency services and community safety. Research demonstrates that youth homelessness costs the Australian Government more than $626 million each year.⁸ That is why prevention and early-intervention is key to reducing the negative impacts of youth homelessness.

Although we cannot reverse the challenges that youth homelessness presents overnight, we can start to reduce its negative impact by enacting opportunities for improvement today. This can be achieved at local, state and national levels. Together, we can support young people and homelessness providers and create a better, more sustainable future for young people. In turn, we can save the Government billions of dollars in the long term.

So, where do we start?

Community and local level

Leading on from the first (and potentially most important) challenge experienced in the sector; misinformation, it’s important to increase education and awareness to improve public perception on the realities surrounding youth homelessness.

This can be achieved through training and programs offered by schools or workplaces to foster understanding and respect. From a community level, schools, workplaces, and local councils can support youth housing and homelessness services by:

Spreading facts and awareness about youth homelessness related matters and standing up to negative or degrading commentary;
Volunteering their time or donating towards these services;
Encouraging their local workforce to collaborate with youth housing providers to provide traineeships or employment opportunities to young people who are at risk or experiencing homelessness; and/ or
Strengthening community support to give vulnerable young people a greater sense of belonging.

Individuals, groups and workplaces can also support advocacy efforts that aim to improve housing and cost of living outcomes. They can do this by lobbying to policy makers to:

provide more available and affordable housing options to young people; and
address cost of living concerns and ease cost-of-living pressures to support young people to access housing and afford their living essentials.

Other opportunities for improvement

Government and non-government organisations (NGO’s) can help improve the situation by investing in funding and supporting programs that:

Target prevention and early intervention of common factors that lead to youth homelessness. For instance; early detection in schools for children from at risk families; supporting programs that improve family wellbeing to prevent breakdown; increasing community domestic and family violence programs; increasing funding for mental health services for young people and families; more support for young people ageing out of the out of home care system; and supporting families close to or below the poverty line.⁷
Have specialist support and programs for homeless youth who identify as First Nations or culturally diverse, live with a disability, or identify as LGBTQIA+.
Specialise in crisis, transitional and wrap-around support for young people who are experiencing, or at risk of experiencing, homelessness, with an emphasis on funding to support their transition to independence by preventing relapse and continuing to maintain sustainable housing outcomes.
Work with youth homelessness and other youth service providers to amend fractured service delivery by creating synergies between services to effectively work together to support vulnerable youth.
Provide rural support to at-risk youth, preventing them from becoming disconnected from their local community.

Stay up to date

If you would like to stay up to date with or support our latest youth homelessness projects and advocacy projects, please visit the relevant links provided below.

Youth Homelessness Project
Youth Homelessness Advocacy