{"id":603460,"date":"2026-04-13T05:34:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T05:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/603460\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T05:34:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T05:34:14","slug":"children-and-75-year-old-among-homeless-in-holiday-hotspot-of-margaret-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/603460\/","title":{"rendered":"Children and 75-year-old among homeless in holiday hotspot of Margaret River"},"content":{"rendered":"

A homeless survey conducted in one of Western Australia’s best-known tourism towns has revealed children and people in their 70s are among those sleeping rough.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a first-of-its-kind survey, the Shire of Augusta Margaret River interviewed some of its homeless population in a bid to secure more services and social housing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Margaret River, 270 kilometres south of Perth, has a median rent price of $800 per week.<\/p>\n

Over three days, shire rangers and volunteers saw 43 locals and 25 seasonal workers come forward, saying they did not have stable accommodation.<\/p>\n

Margaret River homeless data collection<\/a><\/p>\n

One of Australia’s best-known holiday towns must “prove” its homelessness problem.<\/p>\n

The shire believes this result was just a fraction of the number of homeless people living in the shire of 19,000.<\/p>\n

The results have also raised questions about the high concentration of holiday homes in the town, with about 800 short-stay rentals making up at least 10 per cent of existing dwellings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Middle-aged men struggling<\/p>\n

More than two-thirds of people interviewed were middle-aged men, with respondents reflecting a median age of 45.<\/p>\n

\"Vans<\/p>\n

Margaret River is a popular destination, but many people are sleeping in their cars. (ABC South West WA: Anthony Pancia)<\/p>\n

The report found the oldest person sleeping rough was a 75-year-old, while the youngest was a 25-year-old.<\/p>\n

Twelve children across nine different families were also identified as homeless in the survey.<\/p>\n

The report stated that one man had been homeless for more than 30 years.<\/p>\n

“Alex is a 49-year-old Australian man \u2026 and generally spends his days in the local bush,” the report stated.<\/p>\n

Shire president Julia Jean-Rice said she was shocked at the results.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It was really concerning to see that families and children are part of the local homelessness picture,” she said.<\/p>\n

“And also shockingly, that discrimination is a common barrier towards accessing housing.”<\/p>\n

\"Julia<\/p>\n

Julia Jean-Rice is pushing for help for the homeless. (Supplied: Augusta Margaret River Shire)<\/p>\n

Ms Jean-Rice said it was “devastating” to learn about the 75-year-old sleeping rough.<\/p>\n

“Homelessness can affect anyone at any age,” she said.<\/p>\n

Ms Jean-Rice said the figures supported the shire’s continued call for more place-based services and crisis accommodation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It’s a much bigger problem and certainly a much bigger one than the state government realises in Margaret River.”<\/p>\n

Just Home project coordinator Shona Hunter said the data proved the extent of the homelessness problem.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“This [Margaret River] is not as much of a wealthy area as you might think, and given that we have such a beautiful place and lots of tourists, we still have a significant underlying problem of people experiencing homelessness,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Shona<\/p>\n

Shona Hunter says the data shows that Margaret River’s housing problem is serious. (ABC South West WA: Georgia Loney)<\/p>\n

Call for tighter controls on holiday homes<\/p>\n

WA’s short-term accommodation register indicated there are about 900 holiday properties listed in Augusta-Margaret River, while the 2021 census lists about 8,800 private dwellings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Long-term local Dane Gaunt is a private planning consultant and has been calling on the shire to scale back new approvals of holiday homes during the housing crisis.<\/p>\n

He said his crunching of the available listings showed between 10 per cent and 12 per cent of dwellings were being used as vacation properties.<\/p>\n

\"Margaret<\/p>\n

Margaret River locals say the needs of the town’s growing population must be be addressed. (ABC South West: Andrew Williams)<\/p>\n

Mr Gaunt said this was a high concentration, even compared to other coastal areas.<\/p>\n

“No-one is saying holiday homes should be banned altogether, and they do play a really important role in our tourism market,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“But there does need to be some tightening of the rules given where we are at with the rental market.”<\/p>\n

The shire has defended its stance and said its holiday house policy already prioritised permanent housing supply.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ms Jean-Rice said holiday homes were only allowed in certain areas of the shire.<\/p>\n

“There’s a whole lot of things, but we will do our best through our holiday home policy to balance the provision of housing for permanent housing, for holiday homes,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Those two policies, the access and inclusion holiday home policies, work in tandem to ensure that as much as possible in our control, housing is available for permanent residents.”State government urges ‘all reasonable measures’<\/p>\n

Homelessness Minister Matthew Swinbourn indicated the shire should do more to address homelessness.<\/p>\n

“If the shire is taking homelessness as seriously as they claim, it should be supportive of all reasonable measures that will provide secure housing for those people facing or experiencing homelessness.”<\/p>\n

Mr Swinbourn said the government funded 10 services to provide homeless support across the South West and had invested a further $5 million in the services in the past year.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A homeless survey conducted in one of Western Australia’s best-known tourism towns has revealed children and people in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[293887,64,63,293889,293885,293886,293884,44,293888,41844,45],"class_list":["post-603460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-airbnb-margaret-river","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-homelessness-south-west-wa","tag-margaret-river-accomodation","tag-margaret-river-holiday-homes","tag-margaret-river-homeless","tag-news","tag-shire-of-augusta-margaret-river","tag-south-west-news","tag-wa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}