A national conference on homelessness has been told the problem will not improve until more money is provided to drug and alcohol abuse prevention.

Alcohol and Other Drugs Council of Australia (AODCA) spokesman David Templeman says alcohol abuse costs the nation $36 billion a year.

He says the problem will not go away when alcohol can cost less than a bottle of water.

Mr Templeman says homelessness was ignored during the recent federal election campaign.

"It would be fantastic if the alcohol and drug sector could benefit from something like for example Andrew Wilkie did it yesterday for the Hobart hospital," he said.

"We need to get serious attention in this area.

"We saw what the previous Rudd government did in addressing binge drinking - $50 million was allocated.

"That's nowhere near enough."