Daily Bread House
A person sheltering under a plastic sheet on a wet city street, their belongings beside them in a trolley.

The need

The case for a meal, in numbers.

We would rather show you the data than ask you to take our word for it. Every figure below is published by somebody other than us, dated, and linked at the foot of the page.

Brisbane, counted by name

This is not an estimate. Every one of them was counted by name.

Brisbane Zero, a coalition of 32 organisations, keeps a by-name list rather than a headcount. Between 1 July 2025 and 30 June 2026 it recorded the following people as homeless in Brisbane.

2,326individuals identified by name as homeless in Brisbane over the year.Brisbane Zero, reported 4 Aug 2026
984families, and among them 1,539 children.Brisbane Zero, reported 4 Aug 2026
715of those families, more than 7 in 10, were headed by a single mother.Brisbane Zero, reported 4 Aug 2026
985of the individuals were homeless for the first time in their lives.Brisbane Zero, reported 4 Aug 2026

Of the individuals on that list, 604 were First Nations, 54 per cent had experienced violence in the past year, and 52 per cent did not feel safe where they slept. The number of families and individuals surveyed almost doubled over the year.

The bigger group

Most people who cannot afford food are not homeless.

This is the part that surprises people, and it is the reason we set up in a park rather than run a shelter. Hunger in Australia is mostly a housed problem: people in rentals, in work, with children, who run out of money before the week ends.

1 in 3Australian households, about 3.5 million, went without enough food at some point in the past 12 months.Foodbank Hunger Report 2025
20%of households were severely food insecure in the year to July 2025, meaning skipping meals or whole days of eating. Up one point on the year before.Foodbank Hunger Report 2025
68%of single-parent households were food insecure, and 48 per cent of all renting households.Foodbank Hunger Report 2025
60%of households using a Foodbank have someone in some kind of employment. Hunger here is not the absence of a job.Foodbank, reported 5 Nov 2025

A meal you can walk up to and take, with no form, no referral and no means test, is not a lesser kind of help. It is the only kind that reaches people in that position.

The services are full

Turning people away is now routine, and rising.

Specialist homelessness services record every request they cannot meet. Nationally those unassisted requests rose from about 110,000 in 2023 to 2024 to about 129,000 in 2024 to 2025, an increase the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare attributes partly to Queensland.

Queensland also had roughly 6,900 clients in housing affordability stress, the second highest of any state or territory.

These are people who asked a funded service for help and did not get it that day. They do not stop being hungry while they wait.

Volunteers pulling loaded wagons of food and supplies through Brisbane at night.

Why it keeps getting worse

There is nowhere affordable to move to.

Food relief is treating a symptom, and we know it. The cause sits in the housing market, and the published numbers on that are stark.

44,294people were on Queensland's social housing register in July 2026. It peaked above 59,000 in November 2025.Queensland Government, reported 19 Aug 2026
26of 8,163 rental listings surveyed across southern Queensland were affordable and appropriate for a household on income support. That is 0.3 per cent.Anglicare Rental Affordability Snapshot 2026
5.4%of those same listings were affordable for a household on the minimum wage.Anglicare Rental Affordability Snapshot 2026

A household that loses its rental in southern Queensland has, on the published evidence, almost nothing to move into. That is the pipeline filling the park.

What we can honestly claim

105 people at the last service.

That is our own count, at Tully Memorial Park in Logan, and it is about normal for us. We do not ask anyone at our tables whether they are homeless, renting or working, so we cannot tell you how our 105 divide up. The national data above suggests most of them have a roof and not enough money.

We are one small volunteer charity and we are not going to fix any of the numbers on this page. What we can do is make sure that on the days we set up, nobody in front of us goes without a meal.

Put food on the table Come and serve it

Sources

Check every one of these.

We have linked the publisher rather than a summary of it. If a figure here ever stops matching its source, tell us and we will correct it.

Figures on this page were checked against their publishers on 26 August 2026. Nothing here is our own estimate except the 105 people at our last service, which is our own count.