Budget24 Reveals Impact of Losing Homelessness Minister / A.J. Hendry
The role of Minister of Homelessness was vital in focusing attention on the issue of homelessness, with the role gone, progress has stalled...
As we begin to absorb the impact of the budget, one thing that is becoming clear to those of us serving our whānau who experience homelessness, is how significant losing the role of the Minister of Homelessness has really been.
This budget has seen significant cuts to initiatives which were designed to address homelessness and respond to the ongoing challenges we face with housing insecurity in Aotearoa.
Some of the notable cuts in the housing space have been 1 billion of funding for Kāinga Ora, 174.5 million from the Emergency Housing Review and Homelessness Action Plan, 40 million from Māori Housing supply and investments, 20 million to cuts to emergency housing, and most notably for me, 20 million cut for housing homelessness rangatahi.
At the same time, we have seen choices made to allocate resources to the justice system in order to build mega prisons, and boot camps for children and young people (some of which will be experiencing homelessness and would have benefited from the now axed Youth Housing projects).
This point stands out to me particularly as I was involved – alongside many of my colleagues in the Youth Housing and Homelessness space – in making the case to Government for significant investment in responding to Youth Homelessness. Though still small, that 20 million in funding represented a real and solid acknowledgement of the needs of our young people, and perhaps one of the most meaningful steps this country has made in addressing the issue.
It would have gone towards housing young people in desperate need of housing and would have had a significant positive impact on their lives.
The previous Minister of Homelessness, Marama Davidson, had been vital in securing gains in the movement to end youth homelessness, and so when I first noticed the role had been quietly dropped as the new Government came in, I had been concerned. The creation of the role allowed greater accountability and focus upon the issue and was pivotal in supporting the Government to take several significant steps towards addressing it.
Homelessness is an incredibly complex issue, one which requires both collaboration and a coordinated response across a range of portfolios in order to begin to meaningfully address it.
Personally, I believe that the role should not only have been retained, but strengthened (a point I, and several other community leaders made to various National Party MPs prior to them receiving their Ministerial responsibilities).
If we are to end homelessness in Aotearoa, it is vital we keep a laser focus on the issue. It's also imperative that we recognize the complexity.
This is not solely a housing issue, yes housing is foundational to it. However, it is also a very complex health and social issue. Take youth homelessness for example, young people experience homelessness due to a complex range of societal failures. From gaps in the health and mental health system, to the welfare system, to the gaps in the services for children and young people with disabilities, to our failure to invest significantly in early intervention and prevention services for young people and children at-risk of entering the justice system. Wherever you look, significant gaps exist within our society, gaps our most vulnerable children are slipping through, and which no one Ministry alone can fix.
And when you start talking solutions, well, no one solution looks the same. The responses we need for our adult whānau, are not necessarily those required for our rangatahi, or even our young parents, or rainbow youth, or disabled whānau, or those who have FASD.
We need someone coordinating the various systems that both contribute to homelessness and have the ability to prevent it.
When I reflected on the loss of this role earlier in the year, I feared we would lose some of the important momentum we were building in Aotearoa to address homelessness, while risking rangatahi again falling through the cracks as we switch back to focusing on trying to solve homelessness as one, big, single issue.
Sadly, it would appear that we are not simply losing momentum but taking strong and significant steps backwards.
Perhaps the Government has a strategy to tackle the complexity of the issue, and yet I am afraid I am yet to see it. Decisions to weaken rental rights and bring back no cause evictions only increase concern that the Government is either unconcerned with the issue, or simply does not understand it.
We can end homelessness in Aoteaora, but if we are going to do so, we must stay focused and ensure we are both serving those who have slipped through the cracks, while asking the tough questions about how the cracks got there in the first place, and what we can do to close them.
Unfortunately, with the announcement of the 2024 budget, those cracks appear wider than they have ever been.
A.J. Hendry is a Youth Development Worker and rangatahi advocate, working in the Youth Housing and Homelessness space. He leads Kick Back, a service supporting rangatahi experiencing homelessness and is also an advocate working collectively to end youth homelessness in Aotearoa. He is also the curator and creator of When Lambs Are Silent.