When most Australians picture homelessness, we picture a man on the side of the street.
It’s the image we’ve been conditioned to see.
But of the 122,000 Australians experiencing homelessness right now, only 6% are sleeping rough (on the streets). The other 94% – over 100,000 people – are couch surfing, living in overcrowded dwellings, staying in temporary accommodation, or one bad week away from losing the roof over their head.
So many of our fellow Australians are facing hidden homelessness.
Many of them are mothers. Young people. Families.
That gap between perception and reality matters, because it shapes how we respond.
Australia’s homelessness sector is full of people doing extraordinary work under extraordinary pressure. I see it every day through the caseworkers we partner with – people who’ve given decades to this. On the frontline, doing some of the most important work in the country, showing up for the people who need it most.
But the already difficult work they’re doing is getting harder.
Our homelessness services are under unprecedented strain. Demand is outpacing capacity. Investment is growing, but so is the problem.
As a result, we’re spending more time managing crisis than solving it. The sector isn’t failing – it’s being overburdened. The end result is more everyday Australians stuck in limbo, hidden homelessness growing, and the finish line not getting any closer.
So the question isn’t whether the system works. It’s whether we’re supplementing it with the right tools.
If the vast majority of people experiencing homelessness aren’t the complex cases on the street – if they’re people facing a temporary barrier they can’t afford to overcome – then the opportunity in front of us is enormous.
A mother fleeing domestic violence who’s been offered long-term housing but can’t cover the bond. A young person who needs a few weeks of rent to stabilise. These aren’t intractable problems.
They’re solvable, quickly, if we’re willing to do something different.
Read also: Family, eviction and identity: What drives youth homelessness?
At We Are Mobilise, we started asking a simple question: what if we just gave people what they need?
Not a complex program with countless hoops to jump through. Not an endless referral process with only the hope of something small at the end.
Direct funding support – directed at the barrier standing between someone and stability.
One mother we supported had secured housing but couldn’t afford the bond. We paid it in a day. When her caseworker told her, she stared in disbelief. Then she looked down at her children and said: “We did it.”
That moment isn’t unique. It’s replicable.
And that’s what excites me — not what one organisation can do, but what becomes possible when the whole sector leans into this.
There is an enormous cohort of Australians who don’t need years of intervention. They need a bridge.
And we have the evidence, the infrastructure, and the opportunity to build it.
Funders backing what works. Caseworkers empowered to act fast. Partners willing to challenge the way things have always been done.
We owe it to the people we’re working for to keep pushing.
To innovate, to make different choices, and to be brave enough to keep trying — because the business of changing lives demands nothing less.
Under One Roof is a regular column for Third Sector by Noah Yang, CEO and Founder at We Are Mobilise — tackling homelessness in Australia through the lens of innovation, direct giving and the bold choices the sector needs to make.
Noah Yang
Noah Yang is the Founder & CEO of We Are Mobilise, the charity pioneering Australia's first direct cash transfer programs for people experiencing homelessness.
What started in 2016 with bags of bread and conversations on the street has grown into a national charity network spanning 50+ partners across every state - one that has distributed over $3.5 million directly to people facing homelessness and supported more than 1,500 people into housing. The pace tells the story: it took 20 months to distribute the first million, five months for the second, and three for the third.
Much of Mobilise's momentum has been built alongside endurance athlete Nedd Brockmann, whose fundraising campaigns with We Are Mobilise have raised over $9 million and helped bring the mission to Australians across the country.
Mobilise’s programs are backed by the Paul Ramsay Foundation and supported by research from the University of Melbourne, contributing to the growing global evidence base for direct giving. The organisation operates more like a tech startup than a traditional charity - building scalable infrastructure designed to reach more people without scaling headcount.
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