Creating more crisis accommodation will not fix Australia's homelessness problem, according to one expert who believes the solution is "not that complex".

Homelessness in Melbourne and Sydney has come to the fore as an issue in recent years, with a visible increase in people sleeping rough in the cities.

Eoin O'Sullivan, editor of the European Journal of Homelessness, is in Melbourne to present the keynote address at the Victorian Homelessness Conference on Wednesday.

Dr O'Sullivan, who is also a professor of social policy at Trinity College Dublin, said while homelessness was a growing problem in many Western nations, there were countries that had successfully dealt with the issue.

Finland builds homes for homeless

He said Finland had investigated the issue of homelessness and decided "it's not that complex".

"They said 'the first thing we need to deal with people's issues is housing', so they built a lot of housing for homeless people," he told ABC Radio Melbourne's Dave O'Neil.

"From 2008 to 2015 they built 6,000 units specifically for homeless people."

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 7 minutes 48 seconds 7 m What's life really like on the streets when you're homeless?

These permanent, supported homes have reduced Finland's need for crisis accommodation, he said.

"In Dublin, where I'm from, back in 2008 we had about 600 emergency shelter beds in Dublin, they had the same in Helsinki in Finland.

"Today we have about 2,200 emergency beds; in Finland they have 54."

Permanent housing cheaper for government

Dr O'Sullivan said there was a general perception that the best way to help a homeless person was to make them "ready for housing" by putting them in emergency or transitional accommodation while dealing with any personal issues they might have.

He said the housing-first movement, which began in the United States, posits that a person's personal issues were best dealt with once they were in stable accommodation.

"Then if there are mental health issues, addiction issues ... it's easier to work with those issues when they're in housing and secure, and guess what — that seemed to work."

He said there was evidence that this model was both better for the individual and cheaper for government, as keeping homeless people in emergency accommodation "tends to be extraordinarily expensive".

"You're maintaining people in a pretty appalling condition at great cost to the state."

He said the skills required for someone to live in their own home were very different from those required to live in crisis accommodation.

"Very often when we measure things like mental health among the homeless population, you know, it's difficult measuring insanity in insane places," he said.

"If you're living in a big congregate shelter with 40 or 50 other strangers, and the only thing that you have in common with one another is you're all homeless, then your behaviour and your patterns of action are going to be very different than if you're living in your own apartment."

Busting myths of homelessness

A lot of what was said about homelessness was simply not true, Dr O'Sullivan added.

"There's a mantra out there that we're all two paychecks away from homelessness — nonsense."

When you look at the profile of homeless people, he said, factors such as childhood poverty and other adverse experiences early in life "almost predetermine" the people who were highly at risk of homelessness.

"I may drink a lot but the likelihood of me ever becoming homeless is so slight, because I have social networks, I have a whole range of things that will protect me from homelessness."