"A lot of people don't recognise just how many people are struggling here."
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That's what Lindsay Wallace, a support worker with Wattle Tree House, says about Bathurst's hidden homelessness problem.
Homelessness support services Wattle Tree House and the Bathurst Women and Children's Refuge held a barbecue at Peace Park to mark Homelessness Week and draw attention to the challenge.
The latest Census data reported that there were 238 homeless people in Bathurst - a 12.1 per cent rise since 2011.
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Ms Wallace said one of the first steps towards improving support for the homeless is an understanding of how homelessness is defined.
"Homelessness is not just sleeping on the street," she said.
"There are a lot of different reasons why people are homeless or are at risk of homelessness ... it could be they're in a property where there has been a relationship breakdown, or they're in rent arrears or sleeping in the car."
The Census data from 2016 showed that 50 out of every 10,000 people in NSW are homeless - classed not only as people living on the street, but also as people living in severely crowded dwellings, in a vehicle or having temporary living arrangements.
The Australian Institute of Health And Welfare (AIHW) said in its specialist homelessness services annual report that 1.2pc of the national population sought help for homelessness in 2017-18.
The report showed that roughly 60pc of support cases were women, the majority of whom were a lone person or the parent of a single child.
The AIHW report also said that 38pc of those using specialist homelessness services had experienced domestic violence.
The NSW Government committed in February to halve homelessness in the state by 2025, joining the "A Place to Call Home" initiative founded by the Institute for Global Homelessness.
"We know that homelessness is not just a city issue, which is why we have set this target to halve street homelessness across the entire state by 2025," Premier Gladys Berejiklian said in a press release.
Bathurst ranks 50th among all 93 NSW electorates in homelessness, but the number of homeless people in the city often goes unnoticed.
"It's hard to say truly how many homeless there are in the area ... a lot of people don't recognise just how many people are struggling here, but there are many," Ms Wallace said.
Homelessness Week is a way for local support services to raise awareness of the work they do and to advertise the options available for people at risk of becoming homeless.
"Homelessness Week is run every year. We always have an event with other services," Ms Wallace said.
