Michael Reardon has spent the past year living in his caravan after being left with no other housing options.
The 55-year-old said it was a situation that made him feel depressed.
"It's embarrassing, it's degrading, and at the moment not real warm," Mr Reardon said.
"There's a stigma around people that are homeless — that they're all people of substance abuse and so on and so forth, I don't do any of that and I'm homeless."
Mr Reardon said it was a "freezing cold" trek to a toilet or shower from where his caravan was parked.
"There's many people at this place here that have to walk 50 to 60 metres to go to a toilet or shower, it's freezing cold and a long trek in the rain," he said.
"If it wasn't for friends and family and the Salvation Army, I'd probably be very hungry to go with very cold."
Public housing list growing
In 2014, when the Liberals came to power under then-premier Will Hodgman, there were 2,054 applicants on the waiting list for public housing.
Priority applicants then were waiting around 19 weeks for housing.
By April 2022, the number of applicants had more than doubled to 4,382.
The wait time had blown out to 90 weeks — or close to two years.
Don McCrae, the Salvation Army's housing, homelessness and corrections manager, said private rentals were no longer a feasible option for many.
"And so that means that most of the people we see have a reliance on community housing.
"So we are seeing more people who are struggling, we're seeing more people in caravan parks, we're seeing more people who are sleeping rough."
Mr McCrae said the latest census, which would start to release data in June, would provide a more accurate picture of how many people were homeless in Tasmania.
"Statewide they said that about 250 people were sleeping rough at the last Census [in 2016]," he said.
"We know that it's significantly increased. Eighteen months ago we had 358 people on our books in the greater Hobart area who were experiencing primary homelessness, that is that they weren't couch surfing, they weren't in boarding houses or shelters or in prison or in hospital, they were actually out sleeping rough.
"At this census we worked closely with the people taking the numbers and provided information about where people were, so we have a better indication now than we ever did."
Demand for help outstripping supply
Although the census data is yet to be released, the massively increased need for help is already clear to community service providers.
Launceston City Mission is one of several organisations providing emergency relief to Tasmanians.
That covers support such as bill payments, food, vouchers and baby products, averaging about $100 to $120 per appointment.
Chief executive Stephen Brown said Launceston City Mission had seen a significant increase in the number of people seeking emergency relief in just the past year.
"We have an average presentation now at our emergency relief family services centre here at Frederick Street [in Launceston] and up in Burnie where we run sessions for emergency relief of 210 to 220 people a month," he said.
"At the same time, we're not able to provide appointments for about 300 individuals or families a month.
"So the demand is much greater than our capacity to see people at the moment."
Mr Brown said about a quarter of the people seeking emergency support were those in insecure housing situations, either homeless or facing homelessness within a matter of weeks.
"That's up 25 per cent on the previous financial year," he said.
Adrienne Picone, the chief executive of the Tasmanian Council of Social Service, said the official figures underestimated the number of people struggling.
"There are thousands of Tasmanians out there that are really living in dire circumstances without a safe space to call home," she said.
"What we know now is that homelessness disproportionately affects young people and around 37 per cent of all homeless Tasmanians are under the age of 25."
In the 2020-21 financial year, Tasmanian specialist homelessness services were unable to assist with 15,593 requests for assistance.
Figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare show 98 per cent of those unassisted requests were for emergency housing, with an average of 44 requests for emergency housing going unanswered every day, usually because no accommodation was available.
While both the state and federal governments have promised to build more social housing, Ms Picone said there needed to be immediate measures taken to help people while construction was underway.
"In the short term we need to be thinking about innovative and creative solutions about adding to the number of houses out there, things like shop top accommodation and retrofitting offices spaces.
"But we also need to be increasing the rental supply by doing things like restricting the number of whole houses that can be made available as short term accommodation."
TasCOSS wanted the new federal Housing and Homelessness Minister, Tasmanian MP Julie Collins, to focus on increasing the rate of rent assistance.
"If we could raise the rate of Commonwealth rent assistance by 50 per cent it would really go a long way to supporting Tasmanians in the rental market," Ms Picone said.
During the federal election campaign, Labor promised to build 30,000 new social and affordable homes within five years to address national housing shortages.
Ms Collins said the federal government was working with its state counterparts and housing service providers to implement the plan.
"We need to establish the fund and we need legislation to do that so we'll try to do that as quickly as we can do through the parliament," she said.
"But we do need to consult with people first to make sure we get the structure of this right so that we can get the best leverage and get homes on the ground as quickly as possible."
