Social workers say the Christchurch City Council will need to deliver more than a few new houses if it wants to tackle the city's youth homelessness problem - which is getting progressively worse.

The council's Housing Committee will today decide whether to have staff investigate further ways to help the homeless.

But Youth and Cultural Development general manager Anni Watkin says it will take a number of schemes from central and local government, and she doubts the problem can be solved.

"There might be a house with eight bedrooms in it that will house sixteen young people," she says. "That's not the solution. There needs to be a number of different initiatives."

Studies show that if a young person spends more than four weeks on the street it will become a long term way of life.

"They create their own family-whanau with other homeless people on the street," Watkin claims. "So you can come up with a solution for one young person that fits a certain criteria but they won't unless their friends can come with them."

Housing Committee chair Glen Livingstone says the next step will be turning that conservation into positive change.

"People in the city who gather at the housing forum, they know what they're talking about and what to do."

"So it's calling on all that selected expertise. People know what we've got to address it, we've just got try our best."

Livingstone hopes the meeting will end with options for youth housing proposed.