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By Ryn, Thomas, Tara and Arlo, MCM Lived Experience Engagement & Participation team   

For young homeless people, feelings of isolation are common and can have long-lasting impacts. This multimedia work explores those experiences.   

Composed collaboratively by Melbourne City Mission’s Lived Experience Engagement & Participation (LEEP) team, this piece uses a variety of mediums (digital media, ink, poetry) to portray the depths of isolation and loneliness young people experiencing homelessness face.  

Ryn, 24: Feeling ‘left behind’ 

We all experience loneliness. I have never known anything else.  

I grew up in a house where anger was comfortable, where raised voices and flying fists were the background tracks to my childhood.  

My experience is not unique. This is a story we hear echoed in the voices of Australian youth, with two in five young Australians experiencing family violence, a major contributor to youth homelessness.  

There is a reason we say homeless and not houseless; homelessness is more than sleeping on a park bench, you can be homeless with a roof over your head, in the house you grew up in, never knowing if you’re safe, if the people who are supposed to care for you might abandon you, taking with them the very floor beneath your feet.   

There is an inherent secrecy that comes with those more silent forms of homelessness, with living in unstable or unsafe housing. There is an unspoken shame, not wanting your peers to know you are struggling. This inability to share a big portion of your life with the people around you, constantly hearing the way your peers speak about the homeless people you pass on the street, not knowing they’re speaking about you, leaves you feeling othered, feeling separated from those around you.  

One of the most long-term effects being homeless has had on me is constantly feeling ‘left behind’ and having to always try my best just to catch up to my peers. It was really emotionally scarring and affects me to this day. I struggled so hard to try and keep up with the others around me, just to fail, because I had so much on my plate, so much I was dealing with, so many things out of my control.  

Thomas, 21: Failure isn’t an option 

There were a number of things that went into being homeless, things that kept me physically and psychologically exhausted. My health deteriorated rapidly and the longer I was homeless the harder it became to access the services I needed to escape the situation I found myself in.   

My peers were busy making friends, making mistakes, achieving goals and experiencing big lifetime milestones. I was spending all my time and energy surviving and still struggling.   

All the services that are targeted to young people are full—accessing them is like winning the lottery. Adult services don’t want you, and even if you can convince them to take you, those refuges aren’t safe. Mental health services turn you away if you’re homeless and homelessness services turn you away if you’re mentally ill. You can’t access AOD services unless housed, and you can’t get housed unless you’re clean. The only thing we can rely on is us and when you are all you have, failure stops being an option.  

During year 12, I moved twice to try and find stable accommodation. It was tough. I had significant mental challenges. I couldn’t confide in those around me as it made me feel vulnerable to expose my weaknesses.  

I felt lonely. Overwhelmed with schoolwork and at the same time I had to take care of myself, doing things like grocery shopping, maintaining a household, paying rent, managing a budget, surviving. I didn’t have time to stop and worry about the future, but at the same time I have ambition to thrive and achieve greater personal growth.  

Home Time   

Trying to access or maintain housing as a young person on Youth Allowance is impossible, leaving young Australians with the choice to live in unsafe situations or work untenable hours with no time or capacity to enrich their social lives.   

We are at a distinct disadvantage compared to young people with safe supportive families or compared to generations past, who were able to access opportunities that we continue to be denied. We are isolated and cut off from society, forced to fend for ourselves, with an increasing rate of mental ill-health and suicide among young people. We need to act now.  

But we can’t begin to address the epidemic that is loneliness and social isolation without first addressing homelessness.  

We need to make housing accessible to young people by increasing Youth Allowance to the rate of JobSeeker and creating a dedicated pool of youth specific housing with support attached. If we don’t make these changes, young people will continue to be left behind, fending for themselves with all the odds stacked against them.  

There has been an effort by organisations for years to recognise children and young people’s right to access housing as a unique group. Now more than ever children and young people are losing their youth to structural and systemic failures.   

The Home Time campaign is a reflection from hundreds of organisations that this issue is happening across the country and needs the Federal Government to respond. You can learn more about the Home Time Action Plan, which calls on federal, state and territory governments to do more to address youth homelessness, here.

This article first appeared in Parity magazine’s April 2025 edition, ‘The Future Starts Here: Reimagining a Modern Youth Homelessness Strategy for Victoria’. To hear more from brilliant young people, join us at the Victorian Youth Homelessness Assembly, April 29-30. Register here: chp.org.au/yha

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