Difficulties encountered by state governments in rehousing homeless people from emergency hotel placements in 2020 and 2021 are just one recent symptom of an intensifying shortage of social housing that was apparent well before the pandemic. Growing demand pressure in the immediate pre-COVID period is, for example, evident in the rising numbers of priority applicants awaiting a social housing tenancy in recent years.
Figure 6.1
Since 2016 this cohort has expanded by 51%. This followed a 30% rise in homelessness in the previous decade (ABS 2018).