06 Sep 2016

“I don’t have much sympathy for people who beg for money on the street,” a friend said casually the other day. “It seems to me that Australia has a pretty good welfare system and if people are on the street, that’s their choice.”

This sounded a bit harsh to me, especially when it comes to young people who are usually somewhat reliant on others for help. I didn’t really know the facts though, so I decided to find out the main causes of youth homelessness.

There are a lot of different reasons young people become homeless, including domestic violence, family breakdown and instability at home. It may sound obvious, but youth who don’t have a good home life are the ones most at risk of falling into homelessness. There are other factors too, such as poverty, mental health issues and lack of education.

While Centrelink provides support for youth who are studying or unemployed, research suggests that when people lack family support or don’t have an extra income, sometimes Centrelink payments aren’t enough.

According to Homelessness Australia, the cheapest rent available costs about $166/week, which is more 60 per cent of Youth Allowance payments. When you add food, transport and bills, it’s only just enough to survive. This is ok for most, but for those who have added pressures, such as mental health problems, domestic abuse or debts, people without solid support networks can easily fall into homelessness.

Some really heavy examples of youth homelessness in the UK were exemplified recently in a LADbible article.

One girl said: “From the age of 13 I was kicked out of a variety of homes by different relatives due to being a ‘difficult’ teen. No-one knew that my stepdad was a heavy drinker and used to beat me and mentally abuse me.”

Another respondent had a similar story: “I struggled to find a decent paying job, all the while constantly having emotional breakdowns from not being able to afford to live and constantly being afraid of having nowhere to go if I left. Eventually, [my housemate] randomly decided to kick me out of the flat to make room for her boyfriend, and I had nowhere to go…”

These accounts are important because they provide real life examples of how homelessness can happen, and how many of the events leading up to that point are beyond a person’s control.

The people who shared these stories are young people—much like you or me or my friend who said he doesn’t have much pity for beggars—but these young people didn’t have family or friends who were in a position to support them when things got hard. So in their cases, a stressful situation led to sleeping on the street.

While organisations like the Salvation Army and Mission Australia provide support to homeless people, they can’t solve the issue of homelessness, these organisations will not people able to completely put an end to it.

Evidently, people slip through the cracks, and often, the reasons for their poverty and homelessness are beyond their control. It’s something to remember next time you see someone begging on the street.