Financial services: A preventive measure against homelessness? Evidence from Australia

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Ambrey, Christopher L
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2025
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Abstract

This study sets out to investigate the effectiveness of financial services routinely provided to people at-risk of or experiencing homelessness. This study brings together a landmark nationwide panel survey of almost 1,700 people, the Journeys Home survey, with rigorous, random effects logit models. In doing so, this study yields new knowledge which will help to inform social policy and practice with an emphasis on prevention. Specifically, this study reveals that having received an eviction notice in the past three months is associated with a significantly higher likelihood of experiencing literal homelessness, statistically significant at the 1% level. Similarly, being three months behind on one’s rent or behind on any mortgage repayments are both associated with a higher likelihood of experiencing cultural homelessness, statistically significant at the 1% and 5%, respectively. Across all three intervention points (i.e., receiving an eviction notice in the last three months, being three months behind on rent, and being behind in mortgage repayments), financial services were all found to perfectly predict not entering literal homelessness. These results may indicate that financial services are effective at preventing entry into literal homelessness. However, further research is required to extend upon the findings reported here.

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Journal of Urban Affairs

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DE250100397

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© 2025 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

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This publication has been entered in Griffith Research Online as an advance online version.

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Urban and regional planning

Human geography

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Ambrey, CL, Financial services: A preventive measure against homelessness? Evidence from Australia, Journal of Urban Affairs, 2025

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