Young people and children in social housing

Executive summary

Young people and children make up a considerable proportion of residents within social housing. This bulletin looks at:

• how many young people and children are in social housing
• differences in demographics of different household compositions
• long term assistance for young people and children
• repeat periods of housing assistance
• inter-generational assistance in public rental housing and state owned and managed Indigenous housing (SOMIH).

The major findings of this bulletin are:

• Around 300,000 young people, including about 240,700 children were housed in public rental housing or SOMIH during 2008–09.
• In public rental housing and SOMIH combined, there was a disproportionate number of children and young people in age groups 19 years old and under, in comparison to the general Australian population.
• More than one in four community housing households surveyed in the 2007 National Social Housing Survey of community housing tenants were a household with children (27.7%).
• At 30 June 2009, households with young people and children and households with a young main tenant were more likely to have at least one household member identifying as Indigenous than all public rental housing and SOMIH households (23.3% and 30.3% compared to 10.8% respectively).
• A large proportion of households with a young main tenant and households with young people and children were sole parents (46.2% and 73.8% respectively), compared with 19.6% in the general public rental housing and SOMIH population. This varies from the general Australian population where 45.3% of the families captured in the 2006 census were couple with children family types (ABS 2006).
• At 30 June 2009, 17.1% of all young people housed had been in the same public rental housing or SOMIH household since birth. Around half of these young people were children aged 4 years or under.