He said 12 years volunteering to help those at risk of homelessness had through his local church taught him a good deal about causation factors, particularly around family violence, relationship breakdowns, and issues with drugs and alcohol and mental illness.

"I never expected to be the Housing Minister, but I can see that that past experience has assisted me to relate better than perhaps I could have done otherwise," Mr Barnett said.

And the minister sure has some work ahead of him.

Subject to passing Parliament, the government plans to establish a new housing authority by October.

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A skills-based board will replace the role of housing director and it is to be provided with the powers and functions needed to meet the government's housing commitments.

A key commitment, announced earlier this year, is for the construction of 10,000 new affordable homes by 2032, at a cost of $1.5 billion.

This includes the current target of 3500 homes by 2027. To achieve this, the new housing authority will have the capacity to borrow from the Tasmanian Public Finance Corporation, or other entities if approved by the Treasurer, against a balance sheet assessed at being valued at more than $2 billion.

It will also work with the not-for-profit sector.

Mr Barnett said the new housing authority would have teeth, powers and ultimately the responsibility to do what it needed to do.

He said this year's budget contained $204 million to progress the plan, adding the government was on-track to build 1500 homes by June 2023.

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After the establishment of a new state housing authority, the government will turn its attention towards a gaps analysis to identify and detail the state's needs in terms of housing and homelessness.

A key part of this will be the unique needs of women and children.

"It grieves me when I hear that eight out of 10 women that go to a women's shelter are not given support in that year," Mr Barnett said.

"So we'll look at those needs and will attempt to respond to that which we have in different ways."

With input from all the relevant stakeholders, Mr Barnett said that analysis will form a 20-year strategy, to be reviewed five years after its commencement.

He said the analysis would inform where the remainder of the 10,000 new homes would be built and the percentage of homes dedicated to certain risk groups like women and children, young people and people aged more than 50 years old.

Shelter Tas chief executive Pattie Chugg said children, family violence was a major cause of homelessness and the reason for one third of requests to specialist homelessness services.

"Tasmania's current private rental market offers very few affordable and secure options for women and children who need to leave a violent situation," she said.

Additionally, Ms Chugg said women aged over 55 were the fastest growing demographic group of people facing homelessness, due to lower incomes and resources.

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Ms Chugg said affordable rentals like social housing in Tasmania needed to be increased from the current 6 per cent of dwellings to 10 per cent.

"Too many Tasmanians are facing the cold reality of housing stress and homelessness this winter," Ms Chugg said.

"With the cost of living pressures and rising rents, compared to people's incomes, more and more Tasmanians know someone who is finding it hard to find the home they need, or are living with housing hardship themselves."

She said the state's 50 specialist homelessness services had supported more than 6600 clients over the past year," she said.

"On any given day, Tasmanian agencies were supporting 2100 people.

"Of those receiving assistance and support, over 500 were young people aged between 15 and 24 and 240 were children in families."

Ms Chugg said on an average day last year, there were 46 requests for assistance that Tasmanian homelessness crisis services and emergency shelters were unable to meet.

"This number has increased from 36 unassisted requests each day in the previous year," she said.

"Homelessness is far more common than people think.

"Of the 1600 people counted in the last Census, only 8 per cent were sleeping rough.

"We need to consider the remaining 92 per cent of people who are unseen and rarely thought about, and who are living in insecure, temporary, overcrowded and unsafe places."

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Mr Barnett said the government had acted on capacity issues for women and children in specialist homeslessness services, highlighting the expansion of capacity at Launceston's Magnolia House.

He said the budget contained $36 million a year to support shelters, homeless and crisis accommodation as well as safe spaces in Tasmania.

Mr Barnett said the government was acutely aware that housing for vulnerable people meant more than just putting a roof over their head, which is why essential housing facilities were supported by additional services.

Communities Tasmania deputy secretary Peter White said this was where allied health professionals were sought out, particularly if a person's homelessness was caused by mental health or drugs and alcohol.

"But for some of these clients, it can be just really about getting them home and that can address their problems, particularly if it's been an affordability issue," he said.

There are at least 4453 social and public housing applicants in Tasmania waiting for housing as of last month. The average time taken to house priority applicants was 67 weeks - a sharp rise of the 50 weeks it took to house an applicant 12 months ago.

Mr White said 20 per cent of the state's public housing register was made up of applicants aged over 55 years old and a further 20 per cent was made up of applicants under 24 years old.

He said an online portal was hoped to be developed over the next 12 months for new public housing applicants, which would also allow existing applicants to track the status of their housing application.

Over the weekend, Labor's housing spokeswoman Ella Haddad said the government had ignored the looming housing crisis it had created and had engaged itself in a hopeless game of catch-up with big promises they failed to deliver.

"Their promises keep getting bigger, but they amount to little more than a cruel hoax," she said.

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