An economy that rewards those who profit from material wealth has led to an increase in homelessness, writes Chad Satterlee.

The last Australian Census estimated that around 116,000 people were homeless. Our overall population is now roughly 25 million and our gross domestic product is worth over 1.5 trillion U.S. dollars. Even allowing for a threefold surge in homelessness since 2016, the magnitude of these ratios suggests that homelessness is eminently solvable. Bright children are able to quickly identify solutions. But what if our economic system structurally hinders us from implementing them?

For almost two months, an unassuming white house on Magnolia Street in Oakland was home for Dominique Walker and her family.

Her one-year-old son, Amir, took his first steps in the living room. He said his first words there, too – “thank you”. Walker’s daughter, Aja, celebrated her fifth birthday in the house.

“We made it a home,” Walker, 34, told the Guardian.

They made it their home when they entered the vacant structure on 18 November with the intent to stay, knowing full well that they neither owned the house nor had an agreement to lease it. But a city grappling with a housing crisis that has priced out far too many cannot afford to allow houses like the one on Magnolia to sit vacant, Walker said. In Oakland, more than 15,500 units are vacant, according to the latest US census bureau data, while 4,071 people are homeless.

Australia’s bushfire crisis is increasing homelessness across the country and anti-poverty groups are warning of the major challenges this poses for low-income people and rough sleepers.

The fires engulfing the nation have destroyed more than 2,000 homes in New South Wales alone, leaving many people temporarily unhoused.

Community groups say the crisis makes it more important than ever for governments to invest in social housing.

Margot Kushel is having the moment she never wanted to have.

Dr. Kushel is an internist at the University of California, San Francisco. She started specializing in low-income populations shortly after graduating from the Yale School of Medicine, and has spent two decades researching the underlying causes and consequences of homelessness in relative anonymity.

Lately, however, she’s seen her profile rise, as the problem she has spent her career trying to solve has escalated.

Last year, Dr. Kushel was named director of the Benioff Homelessness Initiative at U.C.S.F., which was endowed with $30 million from Marc Benioff, the billionaire founder of Salesforce. The initiative is focused on translating proven homeless solutions into widespread adoption and continuing to research what isn’t known.

There are calls for the Federal Government to address housing as a core component of support for family violence victims as the number of women and children ending up homeless grows.

New statistics released today have revealed that a growing number of women, single parents and children are struggling with homelessness, due to family violence.

So how should we respond to the Chris?

Although it is often undertaken with the best of intentions, the answer does not lie alone in increased charitable donations to people experiencing homelessness. The immediate response of individuals, religious organisations and other groups is often to provide large donations of goods (such as food, clothing and sanitary items) or to deliver services through food vans or mobile washing facilities. These responses have the best of intentions but do little to impact the crisis — as one rough sleeper once told me, you are more likely to die of obesity than hunger living on the streets at Sydney. At worst, as researcher Cameron Parsell has argued, such responses inadvertently normalise homelessness and divert attention away from the achievable goal of ending it.

If we are truly to make a difference to the lives of people experiencing homelessness, we must support initiatives that work towards preventing and ending it. This includes shifting our current service system response from a crisis/emergency accommodation model to a ‘housing-first’ model that rapidly re-houses people once they experience homelessness.

A private member’s bill, moved by Labor MP Josh Burns, recently called on the Australian government “to help build more affordable homes” in response to the growing homelessness crisis. A premise of the bill is that a lack of social housing is a major cause of homelessness and increasing the supply is a key element of solving the problem. The government’s response was that one solution is to encourage social housing tenants to find paid work, so they can move into private rental housing.

Fresh analysis has claimed the Coalition’s new housing deposit scheme worsens inequality and fails to address wider problems in the housing market.