The Structural Drivers of Homelessness : Exploring the relationships between housing market, labour market, demographics, service availability and homelessness in Victoria. /

Includes Bibliography. "This research was undertaken as a short masters thesis at RMIT, and was supervised by. Prof. Gavin Wood. This work was supported by Hanover and additional supervision was provided by Dr Shelley Mallett at Hanover." "Presented at the Australasian Housing Researchers Conference in Adelaide in February 2012."

"The specialist homelessness sector and state and federal governments have argued that tight housing markets are one of the key structural factors driving homelessness. Specifically it is argued that limited availability of low cost rental stock both causes homelessness and prevents its resolution. However, neither homelessness nor housing market research has provided population level evidence to directly support this claim. To address this gap this study explored the relationship between tight housing markets and rates of homelessness, using data from administrative sources, the Counting the Homeless Collection and the 2006 Census across Statistical Subdivisions in Victoria. The relationships between rates of homelessness and weak labour markets, demographic factors, and the location of homelessness services were also investigated. A key finding was that areas with relatively higher proportions of private rental stock and lower median rents had higher rates of homelessness. Median household income had a strong moderating effect on the relationship between rates of homelessness and median rents in an area, suggesting a critical relationship between private rental stock and household income. These findings are explained as the combined effect of sorting and an effective shortage of low-cost rental housing. Regression modelling showed that three key variables ? the cost and amount of private rental housing and household income ? could explain 45% of the variation in rates of homelessness across Victoria. This paper will contextualize these and other findings within the literature, and discuss policy implications and future research concerns."--from paper.

The Structural Drivers of Homelessness.pdf