Sydney's Homelessness Crisis Deepens Amid Housing Shortage and Rising Costs

Reverend Bill Crews says he has never seen Sydney's homelessness crisis worse than it is today.

On any given day, between 60 and 100 people line the street for his foundation's food truck in Woolloomooloo, with some travelling from as far away as Blacktown, he said.

"People will say, 'I've been walking past your vans for years and I never thought I'd be in the queue'," Reverend Crews said.

"I would think because this story is in the news day after day … more would be done.

It is a sentiment shared by Sara Lee, a volunteer at food assistance charity God's Care Love Feed, who said "every week more [people] come in", including those struggling with mental health, and international students.

People with lived experience of homelessness say the issue is deepening, as housing stock remains out of reach and community providers are left struggling to cope with demand.

The 2026 state Street Count recorded 2,308 people sleeping rough, a 5 per cent increase on the previous year.

Meanwhile, a federal housing outcome fund is pushing for thousands of dwellings to be built by 2029 in New South Wales.

Only a fraction of those homes have been completed in the state as of April.

BaptistCare chief operating officer for community services and housing, Robyn Evans, said there was difficulty accessing "safe, secure and affordable" accommodation due to rising living costs, increased rents and a "real challenge to access social and affordable housing".

"We're seeing more people in our inner-city locations sleeping rough because they simply can't afford a roof over their head at the moment … or hidden homelessness like couch surfing or moving from place to place or sleeping in their car," Ms Evans said.

"We certainly are feeling the crunch, seeing more people accessing our services, we have a finite amount of money … a lot of our services we fund ourselves."

The 'changing' demographic

Reverend Crews said across his foundation's meal services, he was seeing "a lot of people [who] have jobs, but they don't have money to survive".

"You'd be surprised, the number of women in cars, with children, sleeping around here because there's no room for them … [while] escaping domestic violence."

Ms Evans said BaptistCare was also seeing an increase in women over 55 waiting for social and affordable accommodation, as well as more double-income families in need of support.

The risks can be fatal.

In Parramatta, a memorial held by the local diocese in June paid tribute to two people experiencing homelessness who died within a fortnight of each other.

The death of Bikram Lama outside St James Station last year also shone a light on the rise of non-residents experiencing homelessness in the city.

"People walked past for ages, for days, walked past [Mr Lama] and they were so concerned about their own lives that nobody stopped to see the guy at their feet," Reverend Crews said.

"So many people are worried about their own income and their own survival, they haven't got that extra bandwidth to worry about other people."

What needs to change?

More than 70,250 households were waiting for social housing on the NSW Housing Register as of May.

Meanwhile, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare last year reported there were 31.8 daily unassisted requests for short-term or emergency accommodation on average in the state.

Advocacy group Homelessness NSW said the solution was clear: a housing-first approach and increased funding for services.

"We need to grow social housing to ensure that people and families have a pathway out of temporary and crisis accommodation into secure, stable tenancies," they said in a recent report.

The nationwide Housing Australia Future Fund has committed funding for about 3,000 social dwellings and just under 2,000 affordable rental dwellings in NSW across its first two funding rounds.

As of April, 164 of those dwellings had been completed.

Separately, the NSW government's Building Homes program is set to build 8,400 new public homes by 2031.

A government spokesperson said 1,711 homes had been delivered so far, describing it as the "largest increase in over a decade".

"They're certainly rolling up their sleeves and developing a pipeline for our social and affordable housing, as well as other housing initiatives in the private market," Ms Evans said of government efforts.

NSW Housing and Homelessness Minister Rose Jackson said there was a 10-year plan in place, including stabilising the rental market, more crisis beds, and building permanent social housing to begin to "turn the ship around".

"I recognise that there's too many people waiting. The only thing we can do to address that is to try and build hundreds and thousands of new homes, and that is exactly what we're doing," she said.

Ms Jackson said while the investment was there, there were still construction pressures affecting the ability to physically build, but modern practices like building homes in factories were addressing this.

"It's not rocket science, the reason [the issue has] gotten so large is the underinvestment was there for a decade, and I absolutely commit to doing everything we can," she said.

Reverend Crews said he wanted to see constituents "get the government to do" more, by writing to their local representatives.

"There's such a shortage of homes, people at the top end of the food [chain] actually get the homes," he said.

"The real homeless ones are still out on the street."