Housing, Disasters & Homelessness: A Failing System

When Housing Isn’t a Safe Place Anymore

When we think about disaster preparedness, we think about sandbags, evacuation plans and cyclone warnings. Very few of us think about what happens when there's nowhere safe to return to after the water goes down.

In 2024, a national symposium brought together 125 experts from housing, homelessness and emergency management to look at one of Australia's most overlooked problems: what happens when our housing system fails during a crisis.

The June 2025 final report doesn't pull punches. Floods, fires and cyclones don't just cause homelessness, they expose weaknesses we've built into the housing system over decades.

The people hit hardest are often those already struggling: renters, people in temporary or insecure housing, and people already at risk of homelessness.

Below I break down the key findings and why they matter for anyone building, renting or buying a home in Australia.

The Report

Preview the checklist

wildfire burning across hillside at dusk — Photo by Matt Palmer on Unsplash

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If your home isn’t ready when disaster strikes, you’re not just at risk of water damage — you’re at risk of falling through the cracks.

Disasters Aren’t Natural — But System Failures Are

The report's strongest message is that disasters aren't 'natural'. Bushfires, cyclones and floods happen, but they only become disasters when they hit people and places that aren't prepared or protected.

That’s not bad luck. That’s bad planning.

The report echoes the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction: building in flood-prone areas, failing to maintain infrastructure and ignoring vulnerable communities are policy choices, not natural events. Build homes in risky places without proper design standards, or leave renters out of emergency plans, and the disaster is set up before the first raindrop falls.

The housing system already has little slack. The report cites over 640,000 affordable and social homes missing from supply, 32% of renters in housing stress, and public housing waitlists of 169,000 households. So when a flood or fire hits, there's nowhere to go, and the people pushed out are often already marginalised.

It gets worse when you look at where we build. Of Australia's 10.9 million dwellings, the report says:

5.6 million are bushfire-prone
953,000 are flood-prone
17,500 are at risk of coastal erosion

These aren’t theoretical risks. According to the University of Queensland, an average of 23,000 people are displaced by disasters every year, and that number is expected to climb with population growth and climate change.

Yet our housing responses, public and private, still treat these events as unexpected. The building industry talks a lot about resilience, but homes are still approved in vulnerable areas without meaningful elevation, drainage planning or climate adaptation.

The National Construction Code (NCC) does provide minimum performance standards, but it doesn’t stop councils or developers from approving new subdivisions in known hazard zones.

Street flooded with water between houses — Photo by Richard R on Unsplash

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Nature isn’t the villain. Poor design, bad planning, and invisible renters are what put your home — and your family — in harm’s way.

What Happens During a Disaster? Lessons From the Front Lines

When disaster hits, the response needs to be fast, coordinated and inclusive. The report shows it's often patchy, overwhelmed and unequal, especially for renters, people in insecure housing and people already homeless.

A key lesson from the symposium: disaster recovery isn't just clearing roads and restoring power, it's housing. Everyone, from social housing tenants to people couch-surfing or living in caravans, needs to be in the emergency plan.

Take the 2022 Victorian floods. Emergency Recovery Victoria built Elmore Village, a temporary housing village, within two weeks. It housed over 200 residents over nine months, and it was in their own community. That kept people near their social ties and services, and reflected what the report calls a “no wrong door” approach: whichever agency you turn to, you get connected to help without the runaround.

aerial view of city buildings during daytime — Photo by Dylan Leagh on Unsplash

But not all responses are this smooth. The report details common problems:

Loss of personal documents like IDs or proof of tenancy — making it hard for renters or people experiencing homelessness to qualify for assistance.
Repeated trauma of having to tell their story again and again to different service providers.
Overloaded systems with little to no surge capacity — especially in communities where the local homelessness services are already under strain.

One practical fix was real-time data sharing. During the Victorian floods, Homes Victoria built on pandemic-era systems that let agencies share information, so people didn't have to keep retelling their story or dig soggy paperwork out of their damaged homes.

The importance of governance also came up. When disaster hits, having clear leadership structures and emergency budgets already in place makes a big difference.

During the Lismore floods, for example, pre-allocated trauma-informed services and strong leadership networks were essential in preventing complete collapse of the housing support response.

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The broader message is clear: a disaster isn’t the time to start figuring out how to support displaced people. The systems need to be ready before the storm hits — especially for those who can’t rely on insurance or a spare bedroom at mum and dad’s place.

What Happens Before the Next One? Why Inclusion Starts Early

Preparedness isn't just sandbags and clean gutters. It's about who's involved in the planning, and who's left out.

One of the key takeaways from the 2025 report is that people experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity are routinely excluded from disaster planning. That includes:

People sleeping rough
People couch surfing
Families in overcrowded housing
Residents of caravan parks or informal accommodation
Renters without formal lease agreements

Why are they overlooked? Because most planning is built around homeowners with fixed addresses, yet these are the people most at risk and least able to get help.

The report argues for paying people with lived experience to help design disaster plans, rather than consulting the same peak bodies every few years. It's fairer, and it produces plans that actually work.

Programs like Logan Together and the Person-Centred Emergency Preparedness (P-CEP) framework show what it looks like when communities are part of the planning, not just recipients of it. These models prioritise:

Psychosocial safety
Trauma-informed design
Respectful language (e.g., “people without homes” vs “the homeless”)
Community cohesion (e.g., gardens, shared activities, and familiar local services)

Participants also flagged “consultation fatigue”: multiple agencies asking the same questions, pulling frontline staff away from actual service delivery. Smaller community organisations can't afford that. The fix: pay them for their time, streamline engagement and coordinate across departments.

There was also a push to meet people where they are, literally. Services like Ask Izzy (a digital directory of support services) were praised as practical tools. So were simple ideas like putting support staff in libraries, community centres or even laundromats.

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Disaster planning shouldn’t start in a government office — it should start in the community. And it should start now.

a homeless man sleeping on the side of the road — Photo by Ankit Manoharan on Unsplash

What Happens After? Temporary Housing, Long-Term Pain

“Temporary housing” sounds simple: a stopgap until people can go home. But in many parts of Australia that phase drags on for months or years, especially where the housing market was already tight.

Disasters intensify existing shortages. Shelters fill fast, caravan parks often sit on flood-prone land themselves, and motels get taken by recovery workers. Survivors end up competing with tradies, insurance assessors and contractors for whatever's left.

The 2025 report, particularly through the work of Professor John Fien and the Social Recovery Reference Group, highlights that:

Australia’s approach to temporary housing is outdated and underprepared.

The usual cycle — emergency shelter, then short-term leases, then rebuild — isn’t working. There are too many delays, too few options, and not enough support built into the housing solutions themselves.

Key challenges include:

Delays in insurance payouts
Slow planning approvals
Reluctance from banks to lend in high-risk areas
Underinsurance among low-income residents
No coordinated pipeline for emergency-to-permanent housing transitions

There are promising approaches, like modular housing that can be deployed quickly and later turned into permanent homes. The report argues for shifting from replacing what was lost to building better for next time.

Effective post-disaster housing must go beyond just roofs and walls. It must be:

Trauma-informed — supporting people dealing with loss, displacement, and mental health stress.
Flexible — able to accommodate families, individuals with disabilities, and people with complex needs (e.g. hoarding, addiction).
Integrated — connected to health, social, and community services, ideally through place-based delivery.

One model in the report is housing pods in the Blue Mountains, designed with shared spaces and wraparound support, aiming to help people recover rather than just house them.

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The big takeaway? Temporary housing must be seen as part of the recovery, not a holding pattern before “real” solutions arrive. For many people, this housing is the solution — or it becomes the thing that determines whether they fall further into poverty and disconnection.

Systemic Failure — When Policy Doesn’t Meet the Ground

If there’s one thread running through the 2025 report, it’s this:

Australia doesn’t have a housing problem because of disasters — we have a disaster problem because of housing.

The real issue isn't just destroyed homes. It's that the policies, funding and support meant to help people recover are disjointed, reactive and built around ownership, not need.

Disaster response still quietly assumes that homeowners get help, while renters, people in informal housing and people already homeless fall into a grey area. Because the framework is built around property loss, people without assets often miss out on recovery support altogether.

White hand raised and closed in form of a punch — Protection for all

This creates a two-tiered recovery:

The “deserving” disaster victim: insured, housed, likely to be supported.
The “undeserving” one: homeless, in unstable housing, or lacking formal tenancy documentation — left to fall through the cracks.

The report is blunt: this is a policy failure.

It plays out across all levels of government, leaving services scrambling without clear guidance, funding or authority. Housing, homelessness and emergency response are still separate silos, even though they deal with the same people at the same time.

There are specific groups who bear the brunt of this fragmentation:

Renters without formal leases
Caravan park residents on vulnerable land
Couch surfers who can’t prove previous residence
Social housing tenants displaced but de-prioritised
People with disabilities or trauma-related vulnerabilities
Those already experiencing homelessness

If policy doesn't recognise these groups, it won't build responses that meet their needs.

The symposium calls for a National Disaster Housing and Homelessness Framework so housing support, mental health, tenancy protections and disaster funding stop playing pass-the-parcel. It includes:

Coordinated national strategy
Cross-sector taskforce
Recognition of renters and homeless individuals in disaster planning
Investment in modular housing and temporary options
Inclusion of people with lived experience in disaster reviews

The report also stresses the need for clear governance, data-sharing protocols and pre-planned budgets.

Big Ideas for a Broken System – What the Symposium Wants to See

Beyond the diagnosis, the report sets out reforms that could stop housing becoming a disaster in the first place. At the heart of it is breaking down silos: bringing housing, homelessness, emergency response, planning, climate risk and social support into one coordinated approach.

👉️ The report makes six major recommendations:

1. Create a National Disaster Housing and Homelessness Framework

A full rethink of how Australia handles housing in a crisis, including:

A national task force spanning government, NGOs, and community leaders.
Alignment of housing, disaster, and homelessness policy under one umbrella.
Planning that includes renters, social housing tenants, rough sleepers, and informal housing occupants from the start.
Real investment in modular, mobile, and community-based housing as scalable responses.
Formalising partnerships so response agencies and housing providers can act fast, not scramble.

2. Build Disaster Resilience Into the National Housing Plan

If resilience is the goal, then it has to be part of the broader housing strategy — not an afterthought.

Integrate with the National Climate Adaptation Plan and new land-use and building codes under development.
Incorporate pre-disaster housing strategies, including transitional and long-term planning.
Invest in new social and affordable housing — not just any housing, but climate-resilient, accessible, and culturally appropriate housing for groups often left behind, like First Nations people and people with disabilities.

3. Use Better Data to Plan Better Housing

You can’t fix what you don’t understand.

Pre-map land availability for temporary housing before disaster hits.
Share data across local, state, and federal government to speed up recovery.
Fund local governments to implement disaster-resilient housing programs — including through existing funds like the Disaster Ready Fund.
Strengthen tenancy protections and minimum housing standards, so renters are not living in flood-prone sheds or fire traps.

4. Strengthen Housing Recovery Processes

Right now, there’s no consistent method for housing recovery across states and agencies. The report proposes:

Clear frameworks that include all housing types — not just owner-occupied.
Tying together housing, mental health, and social supports in the recovery phase.
Joint training and simulation across sectors, so services are ready to coordinate under pressure.
Including lived experience voices in post-disaster reviews — because planning without users is just theory.

5. Expand Access to Local Support Services

This is where the response touches the ground. The report calls for:

Integrated hubs with housing, health, and social services in one location.
Expanded outreach teams to go where people are — particularly those in insecure or informal housing.
“No wrong door” policies that stop people being bounced between disconnected services.
Trauma-informed training for all recovery workers, and long-term funding for services so support doesn’t vanish after the media attention fades.

6. Keep the Momentum Going

Annual follow-up symposium
Ongoing cross-sector collaboration
Advocacy for continued investment in disaster-resilient housing — not just grants after the fact, but strategic, permanent funding built into housing policy.

These aren't small tweaks, but they're not out of reach either. Many already exist in pockets.

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The challenge now is scaling them up, removing bureaucratic resistance, and acknowledging that homelessness after disaster is preventable — but only with planning, not luck.

Where the Report Feels Optimistic — and Where It Feels Biased

The 2025 Housing, Homelessness and Disasters report is one of the more honest government-supported documents you'll read. It doesn't sugar-coat the failings of Australia's housing system in a crisis.

and it’s refreshingly candid in acknowledging that many of these “disasters” are man-made — or at least made worse by inaction, bad planning, or fractured systems.

It’s especially strong in three areas:

Humanising vulnerability: The report consistently centres people, not just infrastructure. It doesn’t talk about “the homeless” as an abstract group — it talks about real people in caravans, couch surfing, or in insecure rentals who are pushed into crisis when disaster hits.
Systemic clarity: It draws a clean line between housing insecurity and disaster vulnerability. Poor-quality housing, rental stress, and lack of affordable options all increase disaster risk — not just in the moment, but in recovery.
Emphasis on trauma-informed and community-based responses: The examples of Elmore Village, modular pods in the Blue Mountains, and integrated service hubs are practical, achievable, and scalable. These aren't moonshot ideas — they’re things already working in isolated places that just need political will and investment to go national.

But the report does have blind spots — or at least some gaps in emphasis that readers should be aware of.

1. Light on accountability for private industry

The building industry, insurance sector, and developers are barely mentioned. There’s no meaningful discussion about:

Why we keep allowing developers to build in flood-prone or bushfire-prone areas.
Why certifiers, builders, or private landlords aren’t held to higher post-disaster standards.
👉️ The role of insurers in delaying recovery through slow payouts or exclusions that leave renters and low-income owners without support.

In reality, many post-disaster failures stem not just from government inaction but from the way private companies shift risk onto households — often without warning, consent, or consequences.

2. Over reliance on top-down solutions

Many of the proposed reforms rely on new frameworks, national strategies and expanded agency roles. That assumes government will act in good faith and deliver, and past disasters suggest that's not always a safe bet.

What’s missing is a more detailed look at accountability — what happens when these frameworks fail or when funding gets delayed? Who gets to hold departments, councils, or ministers to account?

3. Limited discussion of building codes and retrofitting

Much of Australia's housing is vulnerable by design (slab-on-ground homes in flood zones, older fibro houses with no bushfire protection), so the lack of engagement with the National Construction Code (NCC) is surprising. There's also no detailed call for retrofitting existing homes, which is a big gap given the scale of the risk.

4. No mention of class action potential or legal remedy

For people displaced by policy or regulatory failures (for example, subdivisions approved on floodplains), there's no discussion of compensation or legal remedies. The report leans toward policy optimism over legal realism.

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This report is informed and valuable, with strong input from lived experience — but like many policy efforts, it avoids challenging the vested interests that maintain the status quo.

Final Thoughts – What This Means for Your Home

If there’s one message homeowners and future home builders should take from this report, it’s this:

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Your home’s safety isn’t guaranteed by luck or location — it’s shaped by systems, policies, and decisions that you often don’t see.

👉️ Disasters don't cause homelessness or housing stress on their own. They expose weaknesses that were already there: unaffordable rents, poorly built homes, planning decisions made without proper risk assessment, and emergency responses that leave out people without property.

If you're building a home today, think beyond layout and finishes. Ask:

What are the flood, bushfire and erosion risks? Check your council's flood and bushfire overlay maps (for example, Brisbane's FloodWise Property Report), and ask your builder what bushfire attack level (BAL) and minimum floor level apply.
Has the home been designed to meet or exceed the National Construction Code (NCC) requirements for resilience?
What protections do I have as a renter, buyer, or investor if a disaster hits?
How well is the local council prepared for future emergencies?
Is this a home I can safely stay in — or evacuate from — if the worst happens?

Remember that the biggest risk to your housing security might not be the weather. It might be slow insurance payouts, weak tenancy protections, or recovery funding that favours owners over renters.

For builders, designers, certifiers and developers, the message is just as clear. Building with future risk in mind protects your clients and your reputation.

The report makes it clear that safe housing isn't just about materials and methods. It's about whether people, especially the most vulnerable, are protected by the systems around housing. Right now those systems are full of holes, and the time to fill them is before the next disaster, not after.

🔍 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. What does the report mean when it says “disasters aren’t natural”?

It means that while hazards like floods and fires are natural, the impacts they cause — like homelessness and housing loss — are shaped by human decisions. Poor planning, unsafe building locations, and weak support systems turn hazards into disasters.

2. I’m a renter — am I eligible for help after a disaster?

Yes, but it depends on the state or territory and whether you’re formally listed on a lease. Unfortunately, renters are often overlooked in disaster recovery policies that prioritise homeowners. The report calls for this to change.

3. What is a “no wrong door” approach?

It’s a service model where people can go to any agency or support service and get help — without being bounced around or turned away because “it’s not their job.” It aims to reduce red tape and stress during a crisis.

4. What’s being done to improve emergency housing?

The report recommends more investment in modular and mobile housing options that can be deployed quickly, along with place-based support services that include trauma-informed care, health, and housing workers.

5. Why do housing costs go up after a disaster?

Disasters increase demand for local housing — not just from residents who’ve lost homes, but from recovery workers, insurers, and trades. This pushes up rents and reduces availability, especially in already tight markets.

6. Is there any support for people who were already homeless before the disaster?

There should be, but in many cases, people experiencing homelessness are excluded from formal recovery support. The report recommends direct outreach, inclusion in planning, and integrated service hubs to fix this gap.

7. What are trauma-informed housing responses?

These are responses that recognise the emotional and psychological effects of disaster and displacement. It includes providing stable, safe housing, minimising stress, avoiding re-traumatisation, and offering onsite mental health support.

8. What can homeowners do to reduce their risk?

Start by checking your property’s risk profile (e.g., bushfire, flood, erosion). Build or retrofit to exceed minimum NCC standards. Ask questions during land selection, and ensure you have adequate insurance and a personal emergency plan.

9. What role do councils and local governments play?

Local governments approve developments, manage planning overlays, and coordinate emergency responses. The report calls on them to better integrate disaster risk into housing approvals and to work with state and federal agencies on recovery.

10. How does this affect people building a new home?

New home builders need to understand that resilience is part of good design. Choose land carefully, review zoning and flood/fire overlays, and engage builders who understand climate-resilient construction. It’s about protecting your investment — and your safety.

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Disasters Don’t Build Themselves: Why Housing Fails When We Do