Youth Homelessness Matters Day is on the 15th of April, 2026. This is a key date for the Property Industry Foundation, and we are committed to making the day as big as possible. We want to highlight that young people experience the most severe levels of homelessness as an age cohort.
Last year, we went to YFoundations – a peak body for Youth Homelessness – and started working with them to amplify the day. As part of that, we created a partnership with UnLtd and, through them, with Ogilvy and PHD Media. That partnership led to an incredible campaign that ran last year, which you can see here. The campaign – Young & Alone – featured actors showing real-life situations for young people without a safe place to sleep. It illustrated how young people have to stay in unsafe accommodation, sleep in parks, or walk around at night to stay safe.
The campaign will run again this year, and we encourage you to get involved and let governments know that we want action. We have social media posts and other collateral that you can use on or around the day to show your support. The more of us that activate on the day, the more likely the government is to respond.
Youth homelessness is at the intersection of homelessness, housing, and intergenerational inequity. It is now nearly impossible for young people to afford rent. The 2025 Rental Affordability Snapshot by Anglicare showed that there are no rentals available across the whole of Australia for a person on Youth Allowance. Only 3 rooms in a share house were affordable for a person on JobSeeker and only 0.7% of all rentals, or 325 houses, were affordable for a person on the full-time minimum wage.
Basically, if young people can’t live with their parents or have subsidised rent, they are likely to be in unsafe and insecure accommodation. The graph below illustrates what is happening for your young people. Rates of homelessness for people aged 19-24 are persistently higher than all other age cohorts. It is also the cohort that has seen the biggest increase since 2006 and 2021. On the 15th of April this year, stand up for our young people.
