Housing insecurity and homelessness are soaring in NSW, according to a new report by Homelessness NSW and Astrolabe released today.
In the past five years rough sleeping has surged, social housing waitlists have blown out and rents have shot up, vastly outpacing wages.
The report, titled Rough realities: Rising homelessness and housing insecurity in Sydney & NSW, states that since 2020 median weekly rents have risen 45% in metro Sydney, 39% in the Hunter Newcastle region, 36% on the North Coast and 31% in the Illawarra Shoalhaven region.
Nine of the 33 metropolitan Sydney LGAs are deep in rental stress with median rent eating up more than 35% of median household income. This is most dire in Fairfield, Bayside, and Canterbury-Bankstown and where residents are spending 40-43% of income on rent.
The median social housing wait-time has blown out to five years in the North Coast, and to three years in Illawarra Shoalhaven, Greater Sydney, Central West, and Capital Country. The number of people sleeping rough across the state has soared more than 50%, from 1,314 in 2020 to 2,192 in 2025.
"The housing crisis is fast becoming a housing catastrophe," said Homelessness NSW CEO Dominique Rowe.
"The soaring cost of renting is forcing more and more people to sleep in cars, tents or in the street and the dire shortage of social housing is keeping them there.
"Underfunded homelessness services are at a breaking point and cannot keep up with surging demand. This situation has dramatically worsened in the past few years.
"Housing should be the government's first, second and third priority. Its action so far pales in comparison to the scale of the disaster unfolding before our eyes. We urgently need more funding for homelessness services and a significant increase in social housing."
Astrolabe Managing Director Belinda Comninos said the housing system was under severe stress.
"Bushfires, floods, and COVID-19 caused severe disruption that both affected the housing market and inundated struggling support services," she said.
"At the same time, changes to construction codes and escalating material, labour, energy, and finance costs have hugely set back housing development.
"The way out of this crisis is to build. We urgently need reforms to deliver quality housing at speed and scale.
"Current activities are still too passive. Instead, we must act quickly with direct spending on infrastructure and investment in different types of housing. We need it all – private, community and social housing."
Homelessness NSW is calling for:
A commitment to increase social housing stock from 4.7% to 10%
Deliver a 30% increase in baseline funding for specialist homelessness services
