One in four homeless people have a job.
One in three are homeless due to financial difficulties.
One in two are turned away from overstretched crisis accommodation services.
The average life expectancy of a homeless person is 44.
These are the damning figures which have led NSW's peak homelessness body to urge the government to spend $10 billion over the next 10 years to double the state's public housing stock.
Homelessness NSW published its state budget submission on Thursday, calling for the government to invest $1 billion annually for a decade to build an extra 5000 homes a year.
The submission says 30 per cent of social housing should go to Aboriginal people.
The organisation's chief executive, Dom Rowe, said on Wednesday that the homelessness crisis in Sydney, Newcastle and regional areas was an "absolute disgrace".
"We know in the Hunter you have very long waiting times for social housing and hundreds of families in need of homes," she said.
"In many cases people are waiting over five years.
"There's work to be done to ensure Newcastle families have a safe and secure home."
Homelessness NSW also called for extra spending, $30 million over three years, to secure more temporary accommodation and a significant increase in funding for homelessness services.
The budget submission says the state should spend an extra $64 million a year on specialist homelessness services, index providers' contracts by 6.2 per cent a year and invest $62 million over three years to continue the "high-impact" Together Home program.
The document says state spending on temporary accommodation remained "woefully inadequate" despite an $11 million increase in the last budget.
Ms Rowe said she was confident the Minns government had "a handle on the size of the crisis" and the budget was a "chance to put in place solutions".
"It's kind of shocking what will happen if we don't step up to the plate," she said.
"It's a chance to show leadership."
Ms Rowe said rising homelessness would cost governments more in health, police and justice costs and contribute to "disconnected communities" with more tension and conflict.
Long waiting lists
An estimated 35,000 people are homeless in NSW, though a record 68,000 sought help from homelessness services last year.
Government figures show 57,602 applicants were on the social housing waiting list in January, including 8515 priority cases.
The Hunter waiting list was 5520, including 1188 in Lake Macquarie council area and 2036 in Newcastle.
The median waiting time in the Hunter was two and a half years for general applicants, five months longer than the state average, and four months for priority applicants.
Official expected wait times are five to 10 years or more than a decade for all housing types in Newcastle, Lake Macquarie and the rest of the Lower Hunter.
Ms Rowe said a quarter of homeless people in NSW had a job and 38 per cent were homeless due to financial difficulties.
The average life expectancy of a homeless person was 44, almost 40 years below the general population.
One in two people seeking temporary accommodation were turned away because services were full.
The Homelessness NSW submission says the state is "not making progress" on the problem.
It says for some groups, including First Nations people, young people, older people, people with a disability, and survivors of domestic and family violence, the problem is becoming worse.
The submission comes two months after Homelessness Australia chief executive Kate Colvin told the Newcastle Herald that the Hunter was at the "pointy end" of a "broken housing system" which needed urgent federal government intervention.
Ms Colvin said at the time that rent on a typical Hunter home had increased an "eye-watering" 32 per cent, or $134, in three years.
