What Is Habitat for Humanity Australia Doing About Homelessness in Australia?
Homelessness Week 2026, 3–9 August, “Homelessness Action Now”
This year’s Homelessness Week arrives with a message that feels more urgent than ever: Homelessness Action Now. Australia’s housing crisis hasn’t eased, and if anything, the numbers keep climbing.
At Habitat for Humanity Australia, we see the impact of this crisis every day, and we’re continuing to grow the programs helping the most vulnerable people in our community find a safe, secure place to live.
The Scale of Homelessness in Australia Today
The most recent Census data shows more than 122,000 people were experiencing homelessness on Census night, and the picture since then has only become more difficult:
- Around 289,000 people were assisted by specialist homelessness services in 2024–25, a 3.2% increase on the year before.
- 1.26 million low-income households were in housing stress in 2024–25, spending more than 30% of their income on housing.
- The national median rent reached $681 a week in December 2025, up $204 since 2020, while rental vacancy rates have fallen to just 1.7%.
- A median-income household now needs 11.2 years to save for a home deposit, up from 9 years in 2015.
- Women over 55 remain the fastest-growing group experiencing homelessness, and domestic and family violence continues to be a leading cause of homelessness for women and children.
Behind every one of these numbers is a person, or a family, trying to find stability in a system that is increasingly stacked against them. This is exactly why Habitat for Humanity Australia’s work matters, and why Homelessness Week is a chance to share it.
Brush with Kindness: Refreshing Shelters Across the Country
Our longest-running domestic program, Brush with Kindness, partners with organisations across New South Wales to refurbish and refresh transitional accommodation and refuges for people escaping domestic violence or facing other vulnerable circumstances.
In the past year alone, Brush with Kindness volunteers completed refurbishments across 94 properties in Sydney and Newcastle, improving living conditions for more than 1,300 people. It’s hands-on, practical work (painting, repairs, landscaping), carried out by everyday volunteers and corporate teams alongside our Habitat Women social enterprise graduates.
If your workplace is looking for a meaningful way to give back, Brush with Kindness is one of the easiest ways to get a team involved.
Habitat Haymarket: Turning Empty Space Into a Home
Our Meanwhile Use program is one of the most innovative parts of our work in Australia right now, and the Haymarket Revitalisation Project is a great example of what it can achieve.
Habitat is working with Homes NSW to remodel a vacant floor of a multi-use building in Haymarket into six transitional housing units for young people at risk of homelessness. This will be the first youth-only domestic and family violence housing of its kind in NSW that allows siblings to stay together. Habitat Haymarket will be created not by building something new, but by giving new purpose to a space that would otherwise sit empty.
This is the idea at the heart of Meanwhile Use: repurposing vacant or underused properties and land to provide safe, temporary housing while those spaces await their next long-term purpose.
Habitat Penrith: A Refuge for Women and Children Escaping Violence
The Nepean area has one of the highest rates of reported domestic violence in metropolitan Sydney, and around 80% of the women and children currently accessing local accommodation have been referred after being assessed at serious risk of injury or homicide. It’s one of the clearest examples of why safe housing and homelessness are so deeply connected for many women and children, a safe home isn’t just about shelter, it’s about survival.
Habitat Penrith is a new refuge designed to change that. Once complete, it will provide secure, on-site accommodation for up to 200 women and children each year, alongside outreach support reaching a further 650 women and children in the local community five times the current capacity in the area.
The refuge has been designed with recovery in mind, offering:
– 11 self-contained, independent units across 18 bedrooms
– A communal lounge and a dedicated children’s learning space
– Disability-accessible and pet-friendly units
– Private spaces for counselling, therapeutic support, and legal aid
– Secure facilities for remote court hearings
– Basement parking to help protect residents from perpetrator detection
Once operational, Habitat Penrith is expected to provide 70,000 safe nights of sleep every year, helping keep families together during crisis and giving women and children the stability to stay in school, pursue work or study, and begin to build a future free from violence.
Projects like this show why solving homelessness in Australia takes more than one type of response. For some families, that means a roof over their heads. For others escaping violence, it means a genuinely safe place to start again.
Meanwhile Use: A Growing Advocacy Approach
Meanwhile Use isn’t just one project, it’s becoming a genuine model for how Australia can address housing shortages more quickly and cost-effectively. Habitat for Humanity Australia is committed to growing a pipeline of Meanwhile Use opportunities and is actively working with property owners, developers, and corporate partners to identify vacant spaces that could become safe housing.
Recent projects have included:
- A vacant three-bedroom home in Sydney, refurbished in partnership with the Aboriginal Women and Children’s Crisis Service (AWCCS) and Coronation Property, now providing transitional housing for Aboriginal women and children escaping violence.
- Ashfield, now home to the largest Meanwhile Use housing initiative in the Southern Hemisphere: two refurbished homes delivered in partnership with TOGA Group, Women’s Community Shelters, and Jewish House, providing the equivalent of 36,500 safe nights of shelter a year.
These projects show what’s possible when government, private property owners, and the community sector work together. Every one of them is proof that solving Australia’s housing crisis doesn’t always mean starting from scratch, sometimes it means looking at what’s already there and reimagining what it could become.
How You Can Help This Homelessness Week
Homelessness Week is a moment to reflect on how far we still have to go, but also a reminder that solutions are possible when we work together. Whether it’s through volunteering with Brush with Kindness, supporting our Meanwhile Use pipeline, or simply helping us spread the word, every contribution helps build a future where everyone in Australia has a safe place to call home.
If you’d like to learn more about our work or get involved, get in touch with our team — we’d love to hear from you.
Sources: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (Homelessness and Homelessness Services, 2025; Housing Assistance in Australia, 2026), Productivity Commission Report on Government Services 2026, Homelessness Australia.