Efforts to house all Australians make slow but steady progress

As Alan Austin reports, the latest official data confirms that poverty and homelessness are on the decline.

TOO MANY Australians are still “make it hard”To use Treasurer Jim Chalmers‘ whenever the expression tested on poverty. But in June 2025, the proportion of homeless citizens in the population was lower than at any time since records began.

Many recent documents confirm this good news. Latest housing Bureau of Statistics research shows more than 4,000 public sector homes were approved in the year to November. This follows more than 4,200 approvals the previous year. Over 8,000 state housing developments have gone unrealized for two years since 2010, when extraordinary public investment was needed to prevent a devastating economic recession. Global Financial Crisis.

Importantly, the total number of approvals for all new homes in both the public and private sectors in the last 12 months exceeded 195,000, well above recent levels.

Large dump of detailed data

Last Thursday, the Productivity Commission (computer) published an extraordinarily comprehensive publication pile of information. The three reports – 18A on housing, 19A on homelessness and an overview of GA housing services – comprise 113 files containing hundreds of thousands of individual data points and answer almost every question imaginable about residences in Australia, except one.

We know how many homeless people have been sheltered recently, how many have returned to the streets, the condition of the rented houses, the rents paid, and how many poor people live in remote areas. Sadly, we don’t know how many Australians are still homeless.

This isn’t just frustrating for those who want to track results accurately. Worse still, it allows shoddy institutions like the Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS) and media outlets that lie to distort the situation. They want us to believe that poverty and homelessness are getting worse every year. Last week’s data confirms the opposite, at least through 2022.

Australians helped escape poverty

Total 288,970 people helped With a range of services for people in need in 2025. This is up from 280,078 in 2024 to well above 272,694 in 2022.

The number of people experiencing hardship reporting that their needs were met throughout the year rose from 272,689 the previous year to just 256,770 in 2022, to 281,391 in 2025.

The number of clients who find accommodation but then return to homelessness is decreasing. In 2021 and 2022, 11.5% of this group returned to their cars or tents. This rate dropped to 10.3% in 2024 and only 9.8% last year.

The number of social care clients currently in secure independent housing is 210,841 in 2025; an all-time high and an increase of 9,351 from 2022.

Other encouraging data points in 2025 include:

Social assistance cases were closed under the case management plan number 393,996, up from 389,370 in 2024.
Households classified as ‘most in need’ In 2024, it dropped from 14,496 to 13,471.
The proportion of households in greatest need waiting more than two years for public housing fell from 25.5% to 22.8% in 2024.
The number of clients needing income assistance dropped to 8,122; this was the lowest level in five years of PC data. This number dropped to 9,386 in 2024 and to 10,232 in 2021.
Commonwealth rental assistance reached $6.42 billion, up 23.9% on two years ago.

These confirm that thousands of people rose above the poverty line last year.

Social housing stock increased

Social housing will house 417,981 families in 2022, the Productivity Commission shows. Last year this figure reached 429,212 and 11,231 more families were housed. This is more in the last three years than the Coalition had achieved in the previous five, which included the COVID period when tens of billions of dollars were lavished around. See the table below.

States share responsibility

Incompetent newsrooms highlighted two negative numbers which they misinterpret as usual.

First, public housing waiting lists for customers most in need will increase by 6,027 to 35,854 in 2025. This is a significant increase and a disturbing 20.2% that defies national trends.

But analysis of results across states shows the increase in Queensland was 6,380, exceeding the entire increase nationally. The rest of the country saw a decline.

The same happened with clients experiencing “persistent homelessness,” which jumped to 41,081 in 2025, an increase of more than 3,000 in 2024. Close examination confirms that much of this disruption is among Indigenous people in Queensland and the Northern Territory following recent government changes from Labor to Coalition.

Effective measures implemented

The current steady decline in poverty and homelessness is the result of a dual strategy. The Albanian Government has strengthened the economy in general and increased resources in particular. alleviate difficulty.

Direct measures include:

Weekly minimum wage In 2022, it rose 16.7% from $812.44 to $948.00.
Inflation, which rose to 8.44 percent with coalition policies, has now fallen to 3.76 percent.
youth allowance, unemployment benefits, age pension and government rental subsidies have all increased significantly, well above inflation.
There are wages and benefits resurrected faster than prices in the last nine quarters.
more than 1.2 million works It has been created since the 2022 Election, with business participation reaching new record levels.
Income tax rate changes It raised the living standards of low-income families.
Investment social housing increased as discussed above. Recurrent spending increases 13.3% in 2025 from 2022 levels. Capital expenditures increased by 28.3%. See the table below.

More resources still needed

While positive signs abound, challenges remain severe in many sectors, particularly among indigenous peoples.

The latest data confirms the trend of declining poverty and homelessness previously reported here , here and here . Except maybe Queensland and the Northern Territory.

We’ll know for sure when we see the findings. 2026 Census.