“Most of the homeless you would see were older people then all of a sudden you started to see the numbers of young people on the streets rise,” he said.

Mr Horsburgh, the shop manager of Bega Salvation Army store, will sleep on a couch inside the shop on September 16 as part of The Couch Project, a project raising awareness of the staggering levels of youth homelessness.

“Most young people are hidden from the outside world because they are staying temporarily with other households on couches, in refuges or sleeping in their car,” he said.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, of the 44,000 young people homeless in 2012, only three per cent were visible with the remainder moving from couch to couch.