You don’t need to spend hours doomscrolling to know that we’re living in difficult and uncertain times. While fuel might be cheaper at the bowser today, it would be courageous in the Yes Minister sense to try to predict what could happen tomorrow, next week or next month.
Fuel supply disruption and soaring fertiliser costs are continuing to push prices higher, particularly for food. For many households, this is painful but manageable. For vulnerable young people, it is something else entirely.
Young Australians already sit at the sharp end of the housing crisis. ABS data shows people aged 19–24 have the highest homelessness rate of any age group. Home Time estimates almost 40,000 children and young people currently have nowhere safe to live. That is not a marginal issue, it is a national emergency. And it’s about to get worse.
For the young people who do have a roof over their heads, the numbers barely add up. Youth Allowance, even after indexation, falls hundreds of dollars short of market rents in every capital city. Rent often consumes more than half a young person’s income.
At the same time, food costs are rising sharply. Foodbank reports that almost half of low‑income households are food insecure, with many skipping meals altogether. Farmers and industry bodies are already warning that fuel and fertiliser shortages linked to the Iran conflict are flowing through to higher grocery prices.
For many young people, this combination is devastating. No home. No food. And no ability to save money to protect against protracted or further shocks.
Related: The ripple effect: How small gestures break the cycle of youth disadvantage
There are only really two ways the federal government can respond.
The first is to significantly increase Youth Allowance. That would help, and it would be welcomed. It would require a significant investment in the next Federal Budget and the Government should take this action.
The second is more targeted and more urgent. Government can shield young people from the biggest costs driving homelessness and harm by boosting food availability through food banks and introducing a targeted youth housing supplement to close the rental gap that currently locks young people out of housing.
The housing supplement solves a simple problem – community housing providers charge rent based on income and because the youth allowance is lower than JobSeeker or the pension, young people attract less rent. The rental gap is well understood by housing providers and frontline services and drives a structural inequality that sees many young people end up homeless.
Without bridging the rental gap, even newly built housing cannot reach the young people who need it most because the system is set up to fail them.
Crucially, a youth housing supplement is an inexpensive proposal to solve this problem. The cost of a youth housing supplement is around $15 million a year, a drop in the ocean compared to broad cost‑of‑living measures like fuel subsidies, which run into the billions.
The return on investment is enormous. Stable housing dramatically improves young people’s health, education and employment outcomes. By contrast, homelessness is associated with severe mental distress, elevated suicide risk and a long-term cycle of disadvantage and social dislocation.
Preventing compounding homelessness during an economic crisis is not just the right thing to do, it is the fiscally responsible choice because $15 million will have no impact on inflation or the fiscal challenges the government is facing.
In an economic crisis, the real challenge is for our leaders is not to help everyone a little, but to ensure we protect those who will otherwise be hurt the most.
Shorna Moore
Shorna Moore is head of policy at Melbourne City Mission and spokesperson for the Home Time campaign to fix housing for young people.
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