The Suburbanisation of Homelessness in Sydney, Australia

Homelessness in recent decades has been seen as highly spatially concentrated in the inner areas of large cities. Recent research suggests that homelessness remains spatially concentrated, though with some evidence of dispersion and the development of multiple clusters. This study analyses the spatial patterns of different types of homelessness under a relatively broad definition in Sydney, Australia using data from the national Censuses of 2001, 2006 and 2011. Convergence analysis is used to assess whether homelessness rates in different regions of the city have been converging or diverging. Homelessness in private dwellings, particularly in severely crowded dwellings, have indeed created clusters in Sydney’s western suburbs, while homelessness on the streets, in shelters and boarding houses remains concentrated in inner city areas. Growth in severe crowding in these suburban clusters and an increased concentration of boarding houses in inner city areas appears to have increased the spatial concentration of homelessness in Sydney over time. These findings are argued to be important for understanding the relationships between point-in-time homelessness distributions, the dynamics and processes that lead to these distributions and the underlying structural causes of homelessness.