KEY POINTS:
Even as Australia glowed through an almost unparalleled era of prosperity, the number of homeless youths roaming its streets has doubled over the past 20 years, a new report has found.
And the modest inroads made in recent years appear likely to be overwhelmed by the new
crisis in housing affordability afflicting the nation, pushed by a severe shortage of cheap rent rooms and apartments.
Every year, the National Youth Commission reported, emergency shelters are forced to turn away as many as half the 36,700 young Australians seeking a bed.
This did not include the additional 54,700 children accompanying parents desperate for a room for the night.
"This is despite our nation experiencing its highest level of economic prosperity since the 1970s and the lowest unemployment for several decades," the commission said in its report, Australia's Homeless Youth.
"Moreover, Australia is predicted to reap billions of dollars in strong tax revenues from its natural resources boom over the next 20 years and beyond."
Nor would many homeless young Australians benefit from the nation's booming jobs market, the report said.
Arguing that the issue needed to be elevated to the same political priority as climate change and water supplies, the report called for long-term, bipartisan policies to eliminate youth homelessness within 25 years.
It said that with political will, the right policies and progressive investment, the goal could be reached.
Policies of early intervention launched after a major report in 1989 gave an indication of the potential by helping to reduce the number of homeless youths.
The 2001 Census showed 100,000 homeless men, women and children - one-third of them young people aged between 12 and 24, and a further 9900 under the age of twelve.
Most young people had been forced on to the streets by family breakdown caused by crises such as mental illness, domestic violence, neglect, overcrowding and "generational" poverty, especially among Aborigines.
Young people who had been in state care and protection were over-represented in the homeless population. Many suffered some form of mental illness themselves, frequently developing psychological and psychiatric problems as a result of being without a home.
And despite a general decline in drug and alcohol abuse by young Australians in recent years, the report said, the incidence of substance abuse had risen over the past two decades.
This lowered their chances of escaping from the streets, turned many to crime, and helped trap them in poverty.
It said that 10 per cent of the Australian population lived in poverty relative to the rest of the community, especially Aborigines, single parents and the long-term unemployed.
Despite record low unemployment, the jobless rate for those 15 to 19 was still 12 per cent.