Homelessness soars in Canberra - ABC Online

Updated November 12, 2012 19:37:37

In the ACT, the homeless rate has soared 70 per cent in the past five years and is now the second highest in the country.

According to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data, there are 105,237 homeless people nationally, up from 89,728 in 2006.

Homelessness is up in New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT.

ABS figures show that in the ACT on census night in 2011 there were 50 homeless people for every 10,000 people.

But Bob McColl from the ABS says some of that increase may be due to fewer people sleeping rough that night, making them easier to count.

"There were 1,790 people we expect were likely to have been homeless on that night," he said.

"That's up 88 per cent from the 950 homeless persons we estimated from the 2006 census data.

"Offsetting some of those [figures] was a near halving of the number of people who were in improvised dwellings, tents or sleeping out."

Mr McColl says people who are sleeping rough are often invisible to the census.

"People who are sleeping rough are a difficult challenge when it comes to numerating them in the census.

"People like to be a bit anonymous and invisible when they're sleeping rough."

Housing Minister Shane Rattenbury says the figures are distressing.

"There's no silver bullet when it comes to tackling homelessness, but there are a lot of things we can do," he said.

"I'm very keen to forge stronger links between Government and community sector.

"Both those parties have a role to play in tackling homelessness.

"In the parliamentary agreement between the Greens and the Labor party we have committed to establishing common ground in the ACT, which is a dedicated facility to help break the cycle of homelessness."

Topics: states-and-territories, homelessness, act, canberra-2600

First posted November 12, 2012 19:36:33