Shane* has recently started living in his car, but losing a roof over his head is not nearly as painful as losing his family.
“Our kids are in care because we can’t afford to buy the house that we need for our four kids to be doing the things that they need to do,” he said.
“They’re just reaching those ages where everything costs money (and) kids need money.”
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Since the end of last year, Shane and his wife have been living in the broken-down car in North Adelaide that’s a missing a window and fails to keep out the freezing cold breeze at night.
Every day the pair wake up at sunrise and rather than have breakfast with their children, they make their way to the city where they are offered free food by some local businesses, he said.
In the evening, they go to local shopping centres hoping to find discounted food items at the end of their shelf life when they should be having a warm dinner at a family table.
Shane has been supported by several homeless support agencies, but the organisations are unable to get him housing because of the high demand for support they’re experiencing.
Homeless Connect, a statewide telephone service for people sleeping rough, received 6619 additional calls for help last financial year compared to the year before.
Most of those, 65 per cent, came from parents with children, while 70 per cent of them came from people aged 18 to 44 years old.
Social workers said even those who are employed were struggling to keep up with the cost of living or find stable accommodation.
Employment provider WorkSkill Australia has been handing out about 150 swags each month to jobseekers doing it tough.
Catherine House, which offers women crisis accommodation, has only been able to house every one in four clients who come to them for help.
“I’ve been in the industry a long time, and I’ve never seen it this bad,” said Workskil Australia chief executive Nicole Dwyer.
“Any housing provider you speak to, the demand for services is unprecedented.”
The Hutt St Centre has been a lifeline for many homeless people throughout the years, offering them meals and access to amenities like showers and laundry.
“We have young couples come in here in the morning, have a shower, and then they go off to work,” Hutt St Centre chief executive Chris Burns said.
“They’ve got an income, they’ve got the money to pay a reasonable rent, but at the moment they can’t secure a rental.”
SA Premier Peter Malinauskas said the stories of homelessness were “gut-wrenching” and a government responsibility to fix.
About 20,000 South Australians already receive support annually from government-funded specialist homelessness services.
The SA Government has committed to providing 914 public homes, which will be either new or upgraded existing homes, by mid-2026.
To help improve the state’s rental crisis, the state government also announced it would release 25,000 blocks for new homes to be built.
It’s also proposing to change tenancy laws so no-cause evictions would be banned, preventing landlords from ending leases before they expire unless there’s been breaches by the tenant.
Malkinauskas said his government would continue to work on resolving the issue.
“We have to do better,” he said.
“Often people find themselves in these circumstances through absolute no fault of their own. We should be looking at people in this situation knowing that we’re only two or three things away from going wrong in our lives from potentially being in that circumstance ourselves.”
*Last name withheld for privacy reasons
– With Amelia Mulcahy